I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins. I'm a professional psychologist. I'm going to take a look
today at a movie that came out 30 years ago from a perspective of a parenting
expert.
The movie home alone is a classic Christmas time favorite where a young
boy is left at home when the family takes off for a vacation in France. In
this first scene, we're picking up what's happening at home just before the family
leaves. Let's take a look. Have you been there
before? We slept in. They didn't realize that they had a problem until the
knocking on the door and they realized that they've slept in. We all do this
from time to time. Our best plans sometimes fall short. What I like about
this particular scene is that sometimes we have to scramble for things that
we've not thought through completely or that for circumstances outside of our
control. Now, we're up against a problem. I've seen this movie several times. So, as
I'm reacting to it here today, I'm trying to look at this from a perspective of
parenting. And I think what's going to happen next is really familiar to a lot
of us as parents.
Mayham. Most average families experience periods of mayhem where things are just
all over the place. Now, I don't know if you have as many people in your home as
we just saw in this movie clip. There's a lot of people going different directions
and moving around we're scrambling now to make up for
having slept in. Obviously, this is important to the plot of the movie
because how do you forget a kid? How do you leave a kid home? In the process of
all of this mayhem in the movie, one of the neighbor kids sees the
transportation guys loading up the vans. And he comes over to see what's going on
and starts asking questions and getting involved. Right there.
Did you hear what mom said? "Heather, get a head count. Make sure everyone's in the
van." Mom looks a little frenzied. Understandably, right? They're late.
Everybody's running around trying to get those last-minute things together
they've got to make their flight to France with a fairly large family. So,
mom is delegating. Totally appropriate thing to do as a parent. In fact, I would
I would suggest to most parents that they find a way to do a little division
of labor. This is going to come back to bite them in just a little bit. Now,
remember in the meantime, the little neighbor kid is outside talking to the
transportation guys. So, he's kind of milling about there as the family is
starting to transition from the house. Let's go back.
Now, you'll notice the neighbor kid is getting into the van. He's looking. He
finds the camera. "Wow, this is kind of cool." As all the kids have filed out of
the house and now Heather's doing their headcount.
Do you have a Buzz in your family? He's trying to interfere with the whole
process. Now, he's not trying to cause problems necessarily. He's just teasing
his sister. Does that get under your skin a little bit as a parent? It could.
Sometimes it's hard to get our kids to get along with their siblings.
Well, he's teasing a little bit and she's like, "knock it off". But she's trying to do
the headcount at the same time. Now, Heather is convinced that everybody's
there. But you saw her put her hand on the head of the neighbor kid. And that's
why they thought everybody was there. It's really easy to judge these parents
for leaving their child home. But remember, mom had delegated a
responsibility to Heather. Heather did her best bus kind of tried to interfere.
The neighbor kid was there. Nobody really realized that anything was wrong at this
point. And we do this as parents. We move forward with the best we know. We do the
best that we can with what we know. I've told a lot of the parents that I consult
with or who are in our coaching groups. Do the best you know how to do. And when
you know better, do better. This one went a little bit itself. Let's fast-forward
in the movie and see what happened.
"What's the matter, honey?" I'm looking at this mom and seeing that
she has some sense that something's out of place. Now, we do this all the time. Not
necessarily because something's wrong. But we have that sense, right? And I think
a lot of parents do. Husband is responding appropriately. "Honey,
what's wrong?" And at this point, there's still no realization.
They're trying to do the troubleshooting here. "Did you turn off
the coffee? Did you lock up? Did you close the garage? Oop, that's it.
I left the garage open." Now, they're satisfied that it's taken care of. And we
do that, don't we? I think we have a natural sense as parents when
something's out of place. And you've probably experienced this with your own
kids. I know a lot of my clients have. Or they just have a gut feel that
something's not quite right. And then we just scramble to try to come up with
what it might be with the best of our knowledge. Sometimes we come upon an
answer that we think is right. But still not quite resolved in our own mind. And
that's what happens here.
The moment of realization. This is a parenting nightmare. When you realize
what was bugging you and the reasons for it. And sometimes you're not in a
position where you can do anything about it. Can you imagine being in that
position? Now, this is entertainment, right? It's a movie. But I think it captures
that fear, that dread that we have as parents that maybe we've done something
that is not only wrong but potentially very, very threatening to our family. I
can just relate to how she's feeling. Obviously this family was in the air at
the time of the nightmare realization. One of our children is missing. So, they
couldn't really do anything. Remember this was 30 years ago. We didn't have
some of the communication capabilities that we have nowadays. They had to wait
until they got on the ground and then go find a payphone. The next scene is that
the payphone as mom is trying to contact the authorities to get a little bit of
help.
-Village police department. -Yeah. Hi. Look, I'm calling from Paris. I have a son
who's home alone. -Okay, let me connect with Family Crisis Intervention. -Notice
that as mom connects to the police department that she's calling from
another country back home. Desperate having realized that she left
one of her children home. She connects with the authorities and they say, "Oh, let
me connect you to so and so." If it's not a press 1 for this press 2 for that kind
of a menu that you get, sometimes you get someone on the end of the phone who just
doesn't understand what it is that you're dealing with right up front. So,
you get the runaround a little bit. You've probably encountered this as a
parent. Now, what that's triggered for me, I think parents have to be advocates for
their children. You don't just let it drop right there. You have to be a
bulldog. And this mom is doing what she can from a payphone in France
to try to solve a problem back home. But she's getting tossed around a little bit.
Let's see how this plays out. -Family Crisis Intervention. Sergeant Balzac.
-Now, as Family Crisis Intervention picks up, notice how they talk to each other.
She sounds kind of hyper. I've been behind the scenes before. In fact I had a
mom who texted me right in the middle of the night. Crisis, emergency please give
me a call. I call her up. She's pretty hyper, she's pretty frantic. She just
found out her son had been smoking marijuana. Okay,
important, right? But is this a crisis call for the middle of the night? So,
sometimes on the professional side, these people have dealt with these kinds of
issues so many times that to them, it's just another day on the job. That is not
true for us as parents. It can be the most important thing in our life right
now. And this sergeant is eating the doughnut. And he's like okay I got a hyper
mom on line too that I got to talk to. I think as parents, we can have a little
bit of empathy for the professionals who are helping us. But as professionals,
let's be sensitive to the crisis that comes up in the lives of families from
time to time. -I'm calling from Paris. I have a son
who's home alone. -Has a child involved in a violent altercation, with drunken
and/or mentally ill member of his immediate family? -No. -Has he been involved
in a household accident? -I don't know. I don't... I hope not.
-Does you child ingest at any poison and there are the other objects as become
lodged in his throat? -No. He's just home alone. -You can see mom is
getting a little bit frustrated. The sergeant is even getting the doughnut on
the phone. It's just like, "Okay, I got to go through all these questions." Here's
what troubles me a little bit about this scene. Especially as a helping
professional, it's easy to get into kind of the the rote mode of "I've got this
script, I need to go through the questions. I need to categorize this case."
If you're in a helping profession, please talk to
people, not problems." This is not about a number or a case. It's about a family. Now,
I know it's an entertainment movie. But I think this happens all too often in our
system too. I'm not going to spend time today going
through all of the grand adventures that both Kevin and his family have trying to
get reconnected. I want to skip forward to the end of the movie because
something happens here that I think is just really powerful. Now, in this scene,
mom has finally made it back home. After all of her grand adventures, Kevin has
had his adventures with the people who were trying to break in and everything
that he experiences being home alone for that time. And this is where they get
reunited.
-Merry Christmas, sweetheart. -You notice they don't even know what to do right at
first. Remember everything that's happened. If you've seen the movie, you
know that they've both got a lot on their minds about what is transpired
since they last saw each other. They're kind of sizing it up. They're trying to
feel it out. Mom says, "Merry Christmas, sweetheart." Now, watch what happens.
-I'm so sorry.
-Now, obviously this is the heartwarming reunion between mom and son. And the
thing that I think the reason this is so heartwarming is because regardless of
what happens to us and the grand adventures that we face in our life as
parents or as kids trying to deal with parents who make mistakes from time to
time is that the love is there. It's evident. They embrace each other so
warmly. And and it gets back to the thing that I always emphasize with the parents
that I'm coaching. Your job as a parent is to love them. To love them no matter
what and even if. I love that the movie came back around to this and shows that
so powerfully in this particular scene. Our job as parents is not easy. But
there's a lot of help too. I've looked at other movies and television series to
point out some of the parenting tips and tricks that we can learn from them. Check
out the playlist here on the channel for the reaction videos. If you enjoyed this
one I think you'll like those as well.