I had previously blogged about Ciárán’s reluctance to go back to a movie theater after having a horrible experience back in 2011. A year and a half ago he tried to overcome his fear and it did not go well. Since then more movies have come and gone and Ciárán has not shown any interest in going to see a movie in the movie theater.
Until this past weekend.
Minions.
Ciárán has always been enamored with the little yellow creatures from the Despicable Me films. Of all the children he took to imitating them the most. After Despicable Me 2 (which he did not see in a movie theater, than you very much) he would not only imitate the minions, but he could during his impression seamlessly go back and forth to the mutated purple minion from he movie. His favorite fruit is banana because it is the minion’s favorite.
With the Minions movie released theatrically he decided he wanted to try once more to go to a movie theater. Well, he was asked if he wanted to try again and he thought about it. If he were to go see the movie in the theater there would be conditions. The first would be we would have to sit in the back row. Fine. We could do that. His second condition? We would have to get popcorn. Okay. His third? Nope, that was it.
August was at a sleepover so it was myself, Déla (age 9) Ciárán (turning 8 today as I type this) and Xavier (age 5). And Ciárán put on his bravest face. Déla had been through this before a year and a half ago, so she knew what to expect if things went poorly. My worry was with Xavier, because at his age he can not be expected to reason about being afraid of something if you are excited about it.
On the way to the theater as we were driving I kept checking in with Ciárán about how he was doing. On the way in I checked with him. We arrived early for a couple of reasons, the first was to make sure we could get tickets and seats where Ciárán wanted. The second was to give him time to acclimate to his surroundings and be less freaked out when the film began. Thirdly, if he did freak out and we had to leave, I wanted to have enough time to get a refund, take him home and come back with Xavier and Déla to the next showing.
Entering the theater 20 minutes before the film was scheduled to begin Ciárán did well. There was something already being shown on the screen (some sort of pre-movie commercial infotainment) so the theater was already dark and the screen was active. And he didn’t freak out. He walked in and was looking for a seat in the back row. Somehow the theater was already over half full, but thankfully there were four seats in the back row.
With so much time before the movie I was a little worried about having too much time for him to back out of seeing the film, but I also was happy to provide him with enough time to get acclimated. It was a little annoying having him ask every other minute when we were going to get popcorn. My response was “Do you want popcorn with the movie or before the movie?”
I timed the trip to the restroom and getting popcorn for just as the generic theater adverts began (the silence your cell phones and go get a treat in the lobby type of things). Taking him out of the theater was a risky move, because that allowed for him to not want to go back in. Once in it might have been easier to keep him in, but he did want to get popcorn. So we got popcorn and sodas and got back in our seats rather easily. I think the time spent before in the theater getting him acclimated helped.
After the trailers, none of which were inappropriate or scary, the film began.
Ciárán grabbed my arm as the movie itself began, but the opening shot of the Universal logo started to scroll and the minions were singing the Universal leitmotif, Ciárán unclenched my arm and started to giggle then settled into his seat. The minions had done it. They had helped Ciárán become comfortable in a setting of which he had for years been afraid. For the rest of the movie I checked in with him periodically to gauge how he was doing and each time he replied positively.
After the movie Ciárán said he was glad to have gone. I asked if he might be willing to to to another film in the movie theater at some point in the future and he replied that he might. This is a major victory. Not only did he make it into the theater, he sat for the whole feature. To top it all off he is open to the possibility of doing it again.
Not just a win, but a big win. And I am proud of Ciárán for trying to overcome his fear in the first place, let alone accomplishing the task.