More often than not, Friday is family movie night in my house. It’s a time for the four of us to relax after a busy week, snuggle up, and eat food we all enjoy and actually agree on, like pizza, popcorn, and maybe a pan of brownies.
The idea is simple enough, so the execution should have been simple, too. But it rarely was.
While I was putting the finishing touches on our homemade pizza, I could usually hear my kids bickering in our family room over movie choices and my husband trying to be a calm-ish referee. Some nights, voices got louder; many nights, tears were shed. This wasn’t what family movie night was supposed to be.
I was fed up. So I turned to an old school device to restore sanity: A DVD player.
It actually worked
I decided to limit my kids’ movie choices to just a few DVDs I hastily grabbed at our local library one Friday afternoon. When I got home, my husband helpfully pointed out that our dusty DVD player wasn’t even hooked up to our television, but he was able to remedy that easily enough. The late 90s and early aughts were back — at least in our living room.
The night went smoothly. The kids picked a movie and watched it without incident. Two years later, this is still a strategy I use to keep movie night low-stress.
Streaming services have too many options for kids
The streaming services we currently subscribe to — Netflix, Disney+, AppleTV, and Prime Video (plus YouTube TV) — offer way too many choices for my children’s 8- and 6-year-old brains to reasonably process. Add to that some differing interests, and it’s a recipe for a guaranteed sibling squabble.
My kids could not be more different in their movie preferences. My daughter loves anything that she could imagine herself playing a part in, while my son has yet to meet a nature documentary he doesn’t want to nerd out over. Luckily, my husband and I enjoy both of these genres, but let’s be honest, we know our opinions don’t really matter in this scenario.
Week after week, choosing a movie took way more time than our patience could reasonably handle at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday. In the back of my mind, I was selfishly wondering, “How long is this movie-picking process delaying their bedtime, after which my husband and I can actually relax?”
Having fewer movies to pick from was a game changer
My kids love books, so I’m already at the library at least once a week. Now, I always make time to browse the DVD section and pick out a few family-friendly movie options. Sometimes my kids get to have a say in what I grab, but I often try to do this without their input. I usually try to pick one that will cater to each of their interests and then one oldie but goodie from the past that my husband or I enjoyed as kids.
More often than not, my kids choose to watch the older movie, which has led to us watching many classics from the 80s and 90s, such as “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Beethoven,” and “The Sandlot.” Both kids loved them all and have requested to watch them multiple times since their first viewing. These are definitely not films that would have won out if we were searching for our Friday night entertainment on streaming services.
Of course, we still stream movies and shows
Sure, many of the movies we watch could be streamed, but my kids don’t necessarily know that when I present new DVD options to them each Friday. For me, it’s all about limiting their choices and making it seem like they are getting to see something special.
Sometimes my library picks are complete duds, and my kids aren’t interested in watching any of the options I bring home. It took two attempts, several months apart, for them to get into the Tom Hanks classic “Big.” That’s fine by me, though. We need time to watch newer favorites like “KPop Demon Hunters” (for my daughter) or the “Penguin Town” series (for my son), both of which are streaming on Netflix.
We’re about two years into this family movie night experiment with DVDs, and I’d consider it an ongoing parenting win. Our kids bicker less over choices, and we’re able to get the movie started more quickly, which means bedtime can happen almost on time. Then the real Friday night relaxation can begin.
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