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Perfect Age: a little over 2 seems to work very well for us, although some parent websites says as late as 5, I have some friends who took their kid to the theatre when he was a little over 1...I'm not sure if I consider that brave, desperate or crazy.
When to watch: because we don't want to be rude parents, we always choose the first showing of the day...the earliest one...the one no teenager would ever go to...the one in which no dates will occur. I remember being 22 on a Friday night and parents would bring their kids to the movie. Heck, we were watching The Dark Knight at midnight and there was a baby...gar...I won't talk about the parenting skills, or lack thereof on that one, but honestly rudeness people, rudeness!
Preparation: Three adults per kid seems to work pretty well. Your kid can then go from lap to lap, snack to snack and you can situate it in such a way that 2 people are blocking the escape. Lila doesn't weigh enough to keep a seat down so I spent a lot of time pushing her back to the very back of the seat for balance and/or holding the seat down on the edge. We also watch some movies in the dark at home with surround sound.
What movies have we watched in the theatre?
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| We watched this in 3D. She really liked the opening sequence with the castle. "Mommy, did you see that? Wow!" I'll never forget it. |
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| There's a whole cast song at the beginning and end that are just fabulous. She now calls her tricycle her Lorax bike. |
What kind of movies should you watch with your toddler?
Um, I'm only going by what I read on the interwebs and what I know to be true for my 2-year old girl. Take it for what you will. If there isn't action or music or dancing Lila gets bored and I mean crying, fussy "I want to go home now"...The Lorax is not as fast-paced as Beauty and the Beast...just so you know...
1] any movie you hype up (I can't tell you how many times we watched The Lorax trailer)
2] light-hearted movies
3] cartoons and singing over live-action
4] it seems that after 60 minutes...we're minutes away from total baby meltdown...thank goodness there was a song towards the end of The Lorax because Lila was getting bored.
5] know what scares your kiddo...I didn't think Lila Jane would like The Nightmare Before Christmas, but she really likes Sally and Jack and the music...it's kind of weird. This doesn't mean, I'm going to take her to Frankenweenie...dead pet that comes back to life like Frankenstein??? I don't think she'll like that at all!
What movies are Lila Jane's favorites?
Any with singing or animals of course! The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tangled, Aladdin, Puss in Boots (she doesn't really watch all of the last one, but she loves the kittens and the cat dancing at the G-litter Box and she loves Kitty Soft Paws, the other three she will sing to and we'll even do the actions sometimes!)
Article: Movies with Toddlers from What to Expect
