When Fun Time Becomes Scary Time

For Colton’s birthday this year he requested all of the Harry Potter movies. I have seen them all, and I really enjoyed them. I know they are rated PG-13 and some of the content is questionable to me for a 7-year old, but he has watched every superhero movie out there (including X-Men Wolverine Origins which I found scary!) so I figured it would be ok.

He and I (just the two of us) have watched the first 3 with no incident. He is really cute too since he plays the Lego Harry Potter games on his Xbox, Wii or DS he tells me what is going to happen before it happens. He has loved each one so far. He’s never seemed afraid and he follows along quite well. I absolutely adore our time together too. We cuddle and lay on the couch. He eats popcorn. It’s good times.

This leads us here – to #4 The Goblet of Fire. Now, I love Goblet of Fire for many reasons:

• Hagrid gets a girlfriend

• Harry has awesome hair

• The Weasley Brothers have even more awesome hair

• My favorite vampire hottie, Robert Pattinson is in it.

I could keep going on and on, but you get the idea.

Now Colton talks about Lord Voldemort a lot, although we haven’t really seen him in his human form yet. Well, this is the movie where that changes. We see him. We actually see him being re-born. Wormtail throws his “alien-esque” looking body into a caldron, cuts off his hand and then cuts Harry with a knife to get some of his blood.

Then you see this:

This is where my little boy became my SCARED little boy. He started crying and told me to turn it off.  He announced he was afraid!  I was in shock. Never once has Colton ever been afraid of anything. He never shows fear. Sometimes I know he is nervous, but he never admits fear. My poor little man!

I of course turned it off, told him that it was all just make believe and that he knows that Harry Potter is going to beat Lord Voldemort (sorry if this is a spoiler). He said he knew that, but he just didn’t want to watch it right now. I said fine. I then wondered if it was just that he was tired (it was 10pm at night) or if he was truly scared.

Everyone knows I’m that mom that keeps her kids in a “bubble” of sorts, but I like that they are sheltered and don’t have to think or deal with situations that make them anxious or question their safety inside our home. Home is their safe place. I don’t want to change that. But I also want my boy to conquer his fears. I don’t want him to be afraid of make-believe monsters. I want him to be able to decipher between real and imaginary. I talked with him the next morning about Lord Voldemort being fake and that he didn’t need to worry about it. He seemed good. I figured I wouldn’t push him and if we never finished it, oh well.  I didn’t see any good reason to upset him any further, if he truly is afraid of the movie. From this point on, the movies do get a bit more intense, a bit darker and some people start dying off.

Then yesterday, after his awesome (first win of the season) baseball game, he asked me if we could watch the rest of Goblet of Fire. I told him no, that it was too late - thinking maybe watching it close to bedtime wouldn’t be a good idea. He said, ok, but that he wanted to finish it. I assured him we would.

I am proud of him. I am proud that on his own, without encouragement from me, he decided he wants to continue on with the movie. I am proud that he is brave enough to tackle his fear.

I know I don’t like going to scary movies, and I rarely do, but knowing this little boy is willing to tackle his fear, just might inspire me to see House at the End of The Street.

But then again, maybe not.