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Welcome to the KingZoo and Funny Farm, where we learn to live, laugh, and love together. Here you'll find snippets of life in our zoo, parenting tips we've learned along the way, reflections on shining God's light in this world, passions in the realm of orphan care, and our journey as parents of a visually impaired child with sensory processing disorder. Have fun!

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Life lessons from The Little Mermaid

My three oldest children are still bitter.

They were fairly sheltered for those first few years. With three children in just over 3 years, they were more like triplets in what they were and were not allowed to do. It was very easy to control what came into the home and we definitely used this to our advantage.

Let's just take a moment here to mention that this is utterly impossible when you have toddlers, grade schoolers, high schoolers, and college students all under one roof.

But once upon a time, it was not only doable, it was done.

When The Little Mermaid was on TV I thought it would be a nice treat if they could see it. However, upon previewing it, I was fairly certain that Ursula would be too scary for them. Remember, they hadn't seen a whole lot prior to this and you have to admit, she and her cohorts are pretty hideous. Also keep in mind that one of these children, who shall remain nameless, had nightmares after watching Muppet Treasure Island and I had to keep the movie out of our home much to the chagrin of her brothers. Also keep in mind, that these are the same three children who ruined their first movie theater experience by crying as soon as the sharks appeared in Finding Nemo. And here we thought we were giving them a fun, new experience!

Back to The Little Mermaid - -

I decided, way back when, that I'd show them the movie but I would skip all of the Ursula scenes. With much anticipation, we sat down to enjoy the (half) movie together. The only problem was that now the movie made no sense to them; the storyline was gone.

So, Andrew, Jesse, and Mariana, now that I have watched the musical in its entirety twice (with Ursula in it), I would like to fill you in on what you would have learned had you been able to watch this movie:

If you don't like what your dad says, do whatever you want.

If an adult tells you that something is too dangerous to do, never mind them, do it anyway. Not only will it turn out okay, you're likely to meet a prince who will fall madly in love with you and will be your future husband.

Having a beautiful voice will get you a great guy. Every time.

Crabs make terrible nannies.

Crabs make terrible relationship counselors.

Never give up your voice for a guy you only met once and that was while he was drowning so you really couldn't get a great view. And this holds true no matter how cute he is.

On the other hand, giving up your voice, and losing the deal, really means nothing as long as you can break a seashell in which case your voice will come right back, Daddy will forgive you, and you can go floating back up to the surface to find that super hot guy.

Life is better under the sea.

If you have poositivity, everything will turn out right.

Having seven daughters is too much stress; they just fight and bicker and get jealous of each other. All. The. Time.

If you don't know what to say, or have lost your voice, just dance. Someone will be able to figure out what you mean.

Mermaids-turned-humans don't need their fathers to speak for them; they can choose who to marry on their own.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! That's a quite a bit of learning I don't think we want our kids to get from a movie. Hopefully that's not what they take away from it:)

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  2. I can imagine that your older children are still bitter. At 29, I still complain that my mom had so may more rules for me than for my little sister.

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