April 12, 2010

1st movie theater experience for Joaqui

When we went to Nido Science Discovery Center in Mall of Asia a few months back, we went inside their planetarium and when Joaqui sat down comfortably and looked amazed at what he saw, I had the idea that we can try to bring him to a movie theater to watch a movie. We waited for an appropriate movie that is not too scary or would not be too loud for him as he easily gets scared of loud noises. We also planned to watched on a weekday so as there would not be too many people watching and if in case he cried or got too noisy, there wouldn't be a lot of people to bother. When hubby had his off on a Monday, we went to Trinoma and we brought Joaqui to the movies to watch How To Train Your Dragon. At first, he was really hesitant to go inside the theater, but I had told him that there are lights inside and there would just be a very large TV screen. When we sat down, he saw a lot of children inside and he was somehow reassured that there were other children watching. I think Joaqui liked the movie, well not the entire movie because he dozed off during the last 30 or 45 minutes of it : ) It was a good movie for young children like Joaqui who is familiar with dragons, and it teaches children to be brave.


I have read that a 3-year-old child can be taken into theaters for their first movie experience and I was really anticipating this moment when we would be watching a movie as a family. I was very happy that Joaqui had a pleasant first movie experience. I'm glad that we waited for him to be ready because 3 is just a number - it still depends on a child's attention span and his willingness to sit still inside a somewhat dark room with other people around. What just bothered me was the movie trailers shown before the start of the show. How To Train Your Dragon was rated as GP or general patronage, but most of the movie trailers shown were rated PG18 and there were two movie trailers that got Joaqui scared (I think it was Iron Man 2 and The Last Airbender). Next time, I think we would wait until all the movie trailers are finished before we would let Joaqui sit down so he doesn't have to see movies he isn't allowed to see yet.


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