I Am Watching Kids’ Movies To Renew The Joy I’ve Lost. Here’s What I Learned Instead.

As a parent, movies like “Mary Poppins” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” offer a different perspective.

Like most activities with my kids, watching old movies together wasn’t planned. Our first, “The Wizard of Oz,” was the byproduct of my daughter becoming obsessed with the “Wicked” soundtrack. I’d play the album in the car when I missed my mom (she loved musicals), and my daughter eventually began singing along, pausing occasionally to ask questions about Elphaba and her character arc from sympathetic outcast to talented witch to scapegoated villain. She was drawn to Elphaba’s complexity, to how a person can be cast as one thing while striving to be another.

My daughter’s fascination with Elphaba elicited many questions: “Why is Elphaba green? Is Elphaba wicked? Is she good? But how is she good? What about Glinda?” Answering these questions necessitated weaving together the narratives of “Wicked” and “The Wizard of Oz.” Together, the musical and movie paint a broader picture in which the Wicked Witch of the West can be a sympathetic villain, can be someone my daughter can understand and even root for, or, at least, not fear.

This is why even though both of my children are highly sensitive and always want me to fast-forward through the scary, mean and confrontational parts of a movie, they wanted to watch the nearly two hour “The Wizard of Oz.” They believed Margaret Hamilton’s character was more than her wickedness, which allowed them to endure her malicious cackling, flying monkeys and screaming as she melts into a puddle.

As a child, I remember being terrified of the Wicked Witch but loving the movie. I’d watch it with my mom and brother and imagine myself as Dorothy. I envied her ruby red slippers, pretending to wear them, clicking my heels together and saying, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Back then, I was fixated on the glittering, transformative magic of the shoes. I didn’t think much about the home part. Instead, I loved the journey, marveling at the trip through the magical world that culminates with the realization that the characters are seeking something they already possess: courage, heart, brains. Back then, Dorothy’s return home, her shift from feeling trapped to grateful, contained a lesson.