Watched the Disney Channel's "Tru Confessions" with my daughter on Friday, in the hope that she would see some parallel with her sibling relationship in the story of a girl who struggles with but finally comes to value her bond with her developmentally disabled brother. The family dynamics sure looked familiar to me: mother constantly excusing and protecting her son while expecting more from her daughter; father afraid to acknowledge his son's limitations and yelling too much when things inevitably go wrong; daughter resentful that her brother gets away with everything and she with nothing; son pretty happy in his own world, largely oblivious to the stress he's causing. My husband happened to walk through the room during a scene in which the son again created havoc during dinner (this time by spilling a beverage, which used to be a common occurence at our table), and I know he saw himself in the way the father leapt up and shouted, "Can't we ever just get through a meal?" I know he saw himself, because he laughed and shot me a sheepish look. If we had a dollar for every time he's said those words, it would cover the cost of getting the Disney Channel, for sure. And maybe a DVD player, too. And TV dinners for a year.

 

Did my daughter see herself in the on-screen sister? Less likely, I guess. The character was hyper-verbal and hyper-aware, and goodness knows my daughter is neither of those. She's never shown much of an ability to apply fictional situations to real-life ones. But she enjoyed the movie, and maybe a little bit of its message of tolerance for, as she describes her own, "crazy brothers" will seep in. And at any rate, it has me feeling all validated -- the mother's practically the hero of the movie; she turns out to be right about everything, and everybody who's picked on her throughout the 83 minutes makes note of that in the end. Now could we just have a little bit of THAT in real life, please?