Parenting often feels like a delicate balance. You want to protect your children from harm, but you don’t want to overprotect them in a way that can cause a different sort of long-term harm. You want to be on guard against dangers and corrupting influences, but not so on guard that your kids cannot explore, take risks, and learn valuable lessons. You want to cultivate an environment of safety without falling into safetyism.
I’ve thought about this tension a lot recently, especially after reading Jonathan Haidt’s great book The Anxious Generation, where he helpfully describes the difference between “discover mode” and “defend mode.” Haidt argues that many kids today are spending more time in “defend mode” in part because of overanxious parents who prize safety above all. But these kids miss out on the developmental richness that comes in “discovery mode,” where they can navigate the world’s wonders (and dangers!) without constant parental supervision.
I was reminded of Haidt’s common-grace parenting wisdom as I watched a few excellent movies this fall, now in theaters: Blitz, Lost on a Mountain in Maine, and The Wild Robot. In its own way, each of these films offers helpful wisdom about raising resilient kids in a harsh world.
1. Blitz
Set in 1940 London, at the height of the terrifying aerial bombardment by the German Luftwaffe in WWII, Steve McQueen’s Blitz (rated PG-13) is more than just an intense, often haunting story of wartime survival. At its heart, Blitz is about human resilience: enduring horrific traumas and tragedies and still finding joy and purpose in life, making music even as the bombs fall (singing plays a prominent role throughout the film). Specifically, the film captures the hope-filled resilience of children, who sometimes surprise us adults with the fortitude, innocent wonder, and solidarity they can muster even under great duress.
Blitz captures the hope-filled resilience of children, who sometimes surprise us adults with the fortitude, innocent wonder, and solidarity they can muster even under great duress.
Blitz follows Rita (the great Saoirse Ronan), and her son George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), who is sent away from London for safety in the British countryside. It’s the same program that famously sent children to stay with C. S. Lewis in Oxford, partially inspiring the Narnia stories.
Young George jumps off the train, however, and tries to find his way back to his mom. His journey (think Dickens meets The Boxcar Children) is marked by beautiful moments of connection with strangers he helps or who help him, as well as frightful encounters with bad people and hellish warscapes. At every turn, George is confronted with death on the streets of London—a sometimes shocking depiction of a beloved Western city that less than a century ago, we easily forget, was a warzone where nearly 20,000 civilians were killed.
George’s journey is also marked by a painful awareness of racial prejudice. As a mixed-race boy of a white mom and a Grenadian immigrant father, he often feels alien in his own city—even in moments of heightened national solidarity. Still, George doesn’t see himself as a victim and presses on despite the pain, whether physical or emotional. Aptly described by one character as a “scrapper,” George is determinedly hopeful even in the grimmest moments. And his hope—to be reunited with his mother and to build back a life from the rubble—is what keeps him alive.
Compared with some of McQueen’s previous boundary-pushing films like Hunger (2008) or Shame (2011), Blitz might feel “old-fashioned” or “classic” in its storytelling. But while some critics see this as a fault (Variety called the film “almost shockingly conventional”), I see it as an asset. Blitz is an elegantly made, gripping narrative that celebrates familial love, the kindness of strangers, and the way loving community can fuel collective resilience.
Against the backdrop of constant artistic transgression, “traditional” dramas like this are subversive in their own way. In a Western culture where technology has accelerated atomization and “song of myself” autonomy, Blitz argues we’re most alive when we’re living as God created us to live: within a web of loving relationships driven by serving one another rather than by solitary survival.
2. Lost on a Mountain in Maine
Like Blitz, the just-released Lost on a Mountain in Maine (rated PG) is a harrowing story in which a young boy is separated from a parent and must survive a long, perilous journey on his own.
The film dramatizes the true story of 12-year-old Donn Fendler (played by Luke David Blumm), who in the summer of 1939 survived nine days in the remote wilderness of northern Maine after getting separated from his brother and father on a hike. The film’s title comes from Fendler’s autobiographical novel about the ordeal, originally published in 1939, which became something of a young-adult adventure classic.
Against the backdrop of constant artistic transgression, ‘traditional’ dramas like this are subversive in their own way.
Produced by Sylvester Stallone and directed by Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger, the film adaptation captures well the “outdoor survival/adventure” aspects of the story. But I most appreciate how the film captures the bond between fathers and sons, and the particular challenge a dad faces when it comes to balancing risk, protection, freedom, and responsibility. Paul Sparks plays Fendler’s father and does a great job expressing a range of fatherly emotions as he desperately searches for his lost son, bears immense guilt for losing him, and yet hopes the boy learned enough from his dad to survive in the wild world by himself.
You could watch a harrowing story like this (or Blitz) as a parent and respond with a newfound commitment to “defense mode” with your child. But I left both films with a new commitment to preparing my kids to be gritty and courageous in a world whose scariness won’t be kept at bay forever. Sooner or later—and often in unsought ways—they’ll need to find safe passage through a storm of some sort. Sooner or later, they’ll encounter the world’s darkness in its many expressions, even if they don’t go looking for it.
All I can do now is give them wisdom and bearings that—combined with their God-given instincts—will serve them well when those times come, helping them to be a light in the darkness and to follow the light home.
3. The Wild Robot
Any parent who saw The Wild Robot (rated PG) this fall probably had a few moments of misty-eyed recognition. The gorgeously animated film, based on a best-selling youth novel—uses a sci-fi fantasy world to tell what’s essentially a parent-child saga. A robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) becomes an adopted mother to an orphaned goose, Brightbill (Kit Connor). But if Brightbill is to survive in the wild, he must learn skills like swimming and (especially) flying. So Roz does whatever she can to set Brightbill up for success, including recruiting mentors and role models like Thunderbolt (Ving Rhames), Longneck (Bill Nighy), and Fink (Pedro Pascal) who can teach Brightbill essential survival skills.
In Roz, we see that familiar parental tension between protecting a vulnerable child enough but not coddling them to the point that they grow up weak. She recognizes early how harsh the world is and how crucial it’ll be for Brightbill to be able to survive on his own and protect himself. Roz, after all, won’t always be there. She wisely recognizes she doesn’t have enough within herself to sufficiently train and strengthen Brightbill. Her “letting go” of solo authority by entrusting the young goose to other mentors and teachers is a key move that serves Brightbill well.
Another bit of parenting wisdom evident in The Wild Robot (echoing a theme also present in Blitz) is the way Roz goes beyond mere survival in how she teaches Brightbill—suggesting to him that kindness and grace are also “survival skills.” As a robot programmed for mere utility and efficiency, Roz is inclined to focus on the survival component of her task to prepare Brightbill. But she starts to recognize that mere survival is no way to prepare a creature to live.
Her realization is a good reminder to modern parents—perhaps especially Christian parents—that our task isn’t just to create successful survivors who do whatever’s necessary to evade threats and achieve greatness in the world. We also want to raise kids who are gracious and generous, who seek to serve others rather than just preserve themselves.
How to Parent in a Perilous World
If you’re a parent looking for a relatively wholesome film to watch in this month of Thanksgiving, these three are solid options. Thrilling and riveting in different ways, they’re full of wisdom about parenthood and childhood in a hostile world.
At a time when many couples are having fewer kids—a choice sometimes justified by how “messed up” and scary the world is—these movies remind us that parenting has always played out in a wild world where perils are plentiful. But in generation after generation, by the grace of a God who wired us for family, parents tend to rise to the occasion and navigate the challenges. And when given the chance, so do their kids.
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