The other day C came home from school and told me that they were watching a movie in class that really, really scared her. She went up to the teacher and told her that she was scared, (I’m pretty proud of her for speaking up about it… I wouldn’t have as a kid.) The teacher seemed surprised that it was scary to C, but then asked her if she would like to go for a walk instead. So C and her teacher went for a walk while the rest of the movie played out.

As she was telling me this story the my first thought was gratitude to the teacher for taking my daughter’s concern seriously and providing her an “out” for her during an uncomfortable situation.

My second thought was, “What could they possibly have been watching to freak C out so bad. It’s kindergarten for goodness’ sake!”

After pressing C a little bit, and getting some more description from her we learned that it was an episode of The Magic School Bus. Yup, my kid was terrified of the Magic School Bus.  I admit I was pretty perplexed, so I started asking more questions. According to C, she has seen multiple episodes and had never had a problem with it before that day. That particular day they watched the episode where the school bus is shrunk really small and goes inside the teacher’s body via her nose to see how her breathing and circulation works.  After C was in bed, I tracked the episode down on Netflix and watched the first ten minutes of it. The bus travels around in her lungs and arteries and gets itself into a few dicey situations. After watching it, I’m still kind of confused as to what had her so worried, but I know it was bothering her pretty bad because she woke up multiple times that night crying about that movie! Poor little girl. She has a crazy active imagination and a scary good memory, so I know I have to be vigilant about what she watches.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind my kids watching tv. But due to some of my own childhood experiences with reckless babysitters, I try to be very aware of what my children are watching. It’s not that I want to shield them from everything, because I really don’t. However I do want to shield them from subject matter that they don’t need to be dealing with at an early age. (For example, unless it is a British Drama, I really don’t watch adult shows in front of the kids. And by British Drama I mean something more along the lines of Pride and Prejudice and not Downton Abbey.) But I also want to know what they are seeing so that I can have an informed conversation with them. If I’ve seen a movie before they have then I am better prepared to answer any of those questions that inevitably pop up when kids watch things for the first time. With that said, there are plenty of movies and shows that I would deem “safe” before needing to watch them, and honestly The Magic School Bus falls pretty squarely into that category, so the fact that it frightened her so badly was surprising to say the least!