Saving my kids from "Saving Private Ryan"

June 6, 2010

A few years back, when both my boys were still in elementary school, we were still holding the line on shows like Family Guy and various R rated films that my kids swore up and down that their friends were getting to watch.  Reasons for certain kids we knew “getting” to watch certain media fare ranged from parents who seemed to want to “toughen” kids up, to lack of supervision, to children with much older siblings who had paved the way for leniency.

Still, at this point we were holding the line on violent and inappropriate media, having lost various battles such as prohibitions on toy guns, video games in general, junk food, etc.  It seems that for many of us we begin the parenting journey with high ideals and then the realities of day-to-day childcare erode our positions.

And so it was that my younger son embarked on a mission to see Saving Private Ryan and I dug my trenches and built my fortifications against his plan.  He assailed me with the fact that his best friend had seen it, and that it didn’t bother his friend or damage him.  My kid insisted that it was an important film—an anti-war film.  He heard it was very realistic, and this would help him appreciate how war it bad—and all this in the midst of nightly discussion about why America was at war in Iraq.

Over time, it seemed that my kid was getting more and more mature; his relentless desire was filling me with the counter-desire not to hear any more about wanting to see the movie.  And then there is the fact that several highly inappropriate films that I saw as a child helped shape my aesthetic, and I feel positively influenced me—even if they shook me up a bit.  In a world where we may well over-protect our kids from reality, I finally agreed that we could watch this forbidden war picture and it was added to the Netflix queue.

Soon I was sitting with the disc in my hand, gravely explaining how this is a movie, and although it would show very disturbing images of people being shot and blown up, it was important to keep in mind that these were actors and what we would be watching was all pretend (although it was recreating things that did in fact happen).  I felt that I had prepared them for the battle of watching an intense film as well as I could, and so we hit the play button.

I had seen the movie at the theater and so I knew what was coming, but within two minutes my younger son was weeping in horror.  I sat there feeling like I was in a Nazi machinegun nest strafing my own kids.  In a slow motion flash I hit the stop button as fragments of things embedded into my own psyche: my sons’ tears, my wife’s face looking at me like “what on earth were you thinking?”

After weeks of build-up, it was two horrifying minutes of film, followed by at an hour and a half of processing.

Although I pretty much caused the wreck, I turned to my shrink’s knowledge of trauma (which seeing this film turned out to be) and we worked to minimize the damage by fully talking about what the kids had seen.  Vicarious traumatization can occur when we see, or even here about, other people’s traumas.  Talking about what we have experienced, whether directly or indirectly, helps the brain store it as memory where it is less likely to intrude into our thoughts unexpectedly.  We talked about seeing a soldier picking up his own arm after it was blown off, that was pretty much the capper.

We did talk about the reality of wars past and ongoing, and the value of understanding how truly horrible it is for the generally young people who end up in them, often not having much realistic expectation about what it will be like.  And so, by bedtime, both boys were fine, we had talked, cried, hugged, laughed, and watched something more fun and appropriate.  I had apologized and taken responsibility for my mistake… which I also used as opportunity to explain how sometimes parents say no to things to protect kids, and not just to deny them a good time.

The kids slept just fine, and showed no ill effects while I, these years later, am still guilty and ashamed that I miscalculated so badly.  And yet we all must make our mistakes—perhaps the take-away is that while we try our best not to mess up, kids are resilient and will generally come through difficult situations pretty well so long as we validate their hurts, give them space to feel their feelings, recognize where we have erred or failed to protect, in turn promise that we will keep them safe moving forward—and then follow through on that promise.  In this way even a bad situation can be both a teachable moment and a growth experience.

As I write this post, I think of my “uncle” Al, our family dentist when I was growing up, the husband of one of my mom’s three best friends—“aunt” Lil (who died in her fifties after a long decline into Alzheimer’s).  Al was both kind and secretly tough, a rare grown-up who treated you with straight ahead mutual respect, even back in the 60’s.  I knew that he had both landed in Normandy on D-Day, and that June 6th was his very own birthday.  Over the years we stayed intermittently in touch, but there was always some sort of bond between us.  One D-Day anniversary, 1991 in fact, I called him to wish a happy birthday and he said that he’d been watching an old film about D-Day and suddenly found himself weeping—hard.  It surprised him, as he had tried never to really think about how horrible it had all been.  There was some image later in the film that he told me about, which I never personally saw in any war or in any war film which plays in my mind in grainy black and white, a scene of guys eating cake in a trench.  We spoke most D-Days until last June, our final D-Day chat, as he died a few weeks later.

My mind drifts back to the fact that I originally saw Saving Private Ryan because Vin Diesel had a small role in it, and he was interested to star in an action movie I’d written (about a terrorist exposing the hypocrisy of the G-7 countries for doing deals in secret and then publicly attacking them as enemies).  At lunch with some producers one young mom asked me if all the killing in the script troubled me.  At that point I was not troubled, but the universe wasn’t having it (in the end even CAA was surprised that it didn’t go; it could have simply been a bad script, but my hunch was that even though this was pre 9/11, the story was too subversive, perhaps disturbingly accurate).  Now I am troubled by all the comic book “action” I’d written there—and maybe even glad that no one made that film.

I think about clients I have worked with who grew up in war situations, and the devastating effects (not always recognized by kids as it is happening; sometimes they leave their bodies and psyches float in vague relationship to reality); I think of my family’s own history of pogroms and the holocaust; I think of clients who have fought in wars and the horrible scarring, the burdens, secrets and loneliness that is often carried out of the jungle, the airstrip, the battle… and the rippling effects onto children, perhaps now well into adulthood, from shut-down parents, shell-shocked and remote, only meaning to protect their kids, never understanding the post traumatic stress they think of as marks of weakness and conceal in mistaken shame.

I think about how fortunate I am to have a remote to turn off the pretend war just two minutes into it so that my children can be safe; I think about how many kids on this planet are not so fortunate, perhaps lacking parents altogether, or having parents who are caught up powerless in the horrors of the collective Shadow.  Most of the readers of these words likely face ordinary parenting challenges; it serves us, and our children, to keep that in mind as we do our best with whatever’s on our parenting plates today.

So, let’s dedicate today to forgiving ourselves for our own parenting blunders—of tempers lost, issues minimized that should not have been, feelings hurt or fears evoked that could have been avoided.  Let’s also be sure that we have acknowledged our blunders, have apologized to our kids and that we do whatever we need to do in order to avoid doing any more harm as we proceed forward with our parenting.  If we’re not sure if there may be ways our kids have been hurt, by us or others, but about which we are unaware, perhaps it’s a good time to ask our kids directly (and not be defensive about whatever they choose to tell us).  It’s good parenting to listen, validate, apologize and protect.  In this way we can continue to build trust, heal wounds and make life better for all our collective children.

Namaste, Bruce

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

Natalie June 6, 2010 at 1:19 pm

I really could have used this this morning!

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privilegeofparenting June 6, 2010 at 10:56 pm

Well, we’re all in it together every day, so I hope it helps for tomorrow (or better yet is irrelevant tomorrow).

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BigLittleWolf June 6, 2010 at 3:45 pm

Thoughtful, and resonates, as always.

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privilegeofparenting June 6, 2010 at 10:57 pm

Thanks for saying so—namaste.

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Kelly June 6, 2010 at 10:01 pm

Your son’s insistence on seeing Saving Private Ryan reminds me of how intensely I wanted to see Dirty Dancing when it first came out. I wound up watching it in secret at my aunt’s house … and still to this day certain scenes fill me with dread and creepiness. I wasn’t mature enough for it, and she knew it. I know that day will come with my son, and I’ll be thinking back to your words.

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privilegeofparenting June 6, 2010 at 11:00 pm

And now my kid is a seasoned movie-watcher and I’m as likely to be grabbing onto him, especially in horror films, as he is onto me. It all just keeps changing…

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stephanie June 6, 2010 at 11:45 pm

Thanks Bruce. That was nice. Stephanie.

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privilegeofparenting June 7, 2010 at 8:33 am

Namaste to you as well, Stephanie.

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TheKitchenWitch June 7, 2010 at 5:50 am

I love the idea of a day of forgiveness for our parenting blunders. Alas, I have quite a few of them.

I’m interested in the movies you mention that you saw in your youth, weren’t ready for, and were shaped/influenced by. That would be interesting fodder for discussion.

I will never forget watching The Exorcist (even the castrated version they showed on t.v.) and the ensuing nightmares. That thing is frightening.

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privilegeofparenting June 7, 2010 at 8:44 am

Hey KW, I mention a few of the forbidden psyche-shapers in a recent post, “Buby Said Yes Dahlink” (http://bit.ly/9nBgQr), but I also think that “Dirty Harry,” seen with my brother and my dad on the down-low vis-a-vis my mom was a peak experience.

I also felt powerfully entranced by black and white films flickering on the PBS channel in my childhood bedroom: “8 1/2,” “Dolce Vita,” Truffaut’s “La Peau Douce”/”Soft Skin” and “Night of the Living Dead” by Romero all haunt and still inspire me.

Funny one of yours was “Exorcist,” as Andy’s dad, a writer, took her as a kid to a screening of that film, not really knowing what it was about. That one’s stayed with her too, uncastrated. Parallel nightmares.

I’d love to hear about your other forbidden disturbers as well.

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joely June 7, 2010 at 6:49 am

I recently let my 10 year old watch Twilight and I regretted it. She seems to have no problem with it. So we comprimised and I told her she could read the books. THis made everyone happy. I would rather her come up with her version in her minds eye than the other way around. I know some of her friends watch it, but it came across to as too dark and no light. We have watched Lord of the RIngs, but book was read first and this was good. There was good/light and dark/evil and it was clear what side to root for. In Twilight, the concept of good vs evil was lost on me if it is even in there at all and that was problem with the film for a 10 year old. I still do not how I feel about my decision to let her read it, maybe I will regret that too but I like your take on admitting to children that adults make mistakes too and then own up to them.
I am also a war buff movie fanatic so I am glad to learn from your mistake here with this particular film. I remember seeing it with my Grandmother and how she cried for 2 hours after the film was over. She saw in her minds eye all the friends and family she had lost. She felt she needed it to heal, some 50 years later.

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privilegeofparenting June 7, 2010 at 8:49 am

I just welcome the chance to connect as grown-ups and wrestle with the difficult questions and the confluence of the opposites (especially good and evil). Sometimes I think that the opposite of good and love is not so much evil but indifference.

I do hope that greater consciousness in ourselves might lessen our need to act our Shadow sides out in “real” violence. Movies and stories are powerful… and if they can carry the Shadow, perhaps bombs and bullets might not have to.

Namaste either way

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Erica@PinesLakeRedhead June 10, 2010 at 7:55 am

I saw Saving Private Ryan in the theater as well. I sobbed through the entire film and for days after. Yes, they were actors portraying an actual event and that should have created some distance for me. But in my heart I knew that real men had lived through such a horrible event and then eventually went home to resume their lives. It was unfathomable for me. Since then I haven’t been able to watch any war moive. Shoot ’em up action films don’t bother me because I know it’s fiction.

I’m not sure if my teenage sons have watched that movie but I do know that they have seen Band of Brothers and Pacific. They’ve watched those programs with my husband (a Navy veteran) and he always discussed what they saw.

I’m extremely grateful that my children are safe from harm. But at the same time I don’t want them to grow up unaware. This is a tricky line we walk – how much do we protect our children and how much do we expose them to the horros of life.

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privilegeofparenting June 10, 2010 at 9:55 pm

And by what possible shifts in consciousness might we come to see everyone as our sisters and brothers? Sometimes our personal anguish can relate to the collective suffering in the world; another question we face is how can we neither be destroyed by the sorrows of the world nor turn away in denial, but rather band together and, as a group, compassionately contain the feelings of rage, fear, lack, loss, anxiety, depression and oppression that often lead to collective violence if they cannot be managed in a safe, validating and life-affirming manner.

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Luke March 4, 2013 at 6:44 pm

If you have to tell your kids its “just pretend”, then you know they’re definitely too young

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Bruce March 4, 2013 at 8:46 pm

Good point. The challenge is when they keep saying that they are ready and sometimes you just don’t know for sure until you blow something and learn the parenting lessons the hard way…

I know so much more about it looking back than I did moving through it.

Hopefully the next gen will be wiser than the previous :)

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