My daughter (4.5 years) is a big LOTR fan. She has of course not seen the movies but she does know the name of all the characters on the poster. This is mostly due to her older cousin teaching her the names when babysitting (we live close to a movie theater which she passes every day).
Last night however she did the cutest thing ever.
I got handed a promo figure for a game based on the movie at a game store recently. It was Eowyn and I gave it to my daughter and told her it was a princess and what she was called. She took it happily and went back to her room.
Then while I was cooking dinner she came into the kitchen and asked, “Daddy, how do you draw a sword?”. “Just draw a line, with a little line down by the hand” I said and went back to my cooking, wondering why she had asked about that.
After a while she came back and said she had a gift for me. She had made a drawing of the Eowyn figure, complete with a dress, long blond hair and with a sword in her hands. She had even written Eowyn underneath, by copying the letters from the base of the figure.
Daddy was so proud. It now sits in a place of honour on my desk at work.
I get asked by my five year old every so often to “tell me about Lord of the Rings”. He expects the full tale, from Hobbiton on. He has seen parts of the first movie, most of the cheesy animated versions, etc. If he had asked me how to draw a sword, I would have unblinkingly answered, “With your right hand grasp the hilt, with your left the scabbard and pull out across your body with your right hand.” Some of us are just wired differently, I suppose.
How adorable. She sounds delightful, Coil. I hope you framed it properly in a very nice frame for your desk. And why couldn’t my daughter be like that? Bluebear is not interested in anything Sci-Fi or Fantasy. Mr Bear doesn’t get it either. At least I have a guaranteed date with my son, luminousman, for all of the LOTR movies, and such. I have worn out two previous copies of LOTR, including one of the original ones. Wish I’d hung onto that set now, but when you’re a teen you don’t really understand appreciating value.
Shibb, that was my first thought when I read that also. chuckle Then I remembered how little tykes can be, and Coil answered just what she wanted to know.
I have a picture of Smaug drawn by my daughter when she was about 2, which was when we first read her The Hobbit. The anatomical bits are a little vague, but it is extremely fiery.
If she had asked in English I might have replied that way too. In Swedish drawing a sword as in pulling it out of the scabbard and drawing it on paper are different words though.
My 5 year old daughter has sat through Fellowship and Two Towers. She has a long attention span for movies.
I’m really glad that the DVDs come with all of the “making-of” features because it helps to reinforce that this is just a movie. My daughter has seen me perform on stage, and has seen videos of other actors playing the same roles I was doing, so she knows what acting is all about. But actually seeing the technician working with the Balrog puppet, or watching the orcs strutting around without their masks between takes have probably helped to reinforce the unreality of it. As a result, she’s never had any nightmares from watching the movies.
It’s not that my kids can’t sit still through those, I’m sure that my five year old could actually sit still through all three in a row. He’s very patient that way. The problem is more in exposing a young kid to that kind of violence, even though they know that it’s “pretend”. Psych studies show that young boys exposed to violence have a spiked heart rate during the violent scenes, even if it’s cartoon violence. (Damn, now I’ll have to go see if I can Google a cite for that since I just recall reading/hearing it on some news somewhere). So IMO it’s not the best thing to expose your kids to. Books are a bit different, in that they’re not as prone to graphic interpretation (mostly).
I thought it was good to maintain an elevated heart rate for a certain amount of time every day. Why go to gym class when you can just watch violent movies?
For thr record, I also thought that’s what she meant by “drawing a sword”. Cool story. She’ll get a huge kick out of watching the movies in a few years.
It now sits in a place of honour on my desk at work.
