Tucked in by Tom Hanks

Sometimes the energy spent in your everyday routine and being there for your very active kids can bring you to some innovative ideas. Well innovative is a relative term. Sometimes you’re just so tired at the end of the day that you conjure up some crazy idea that just happens to work well to serve a purpose with your kids.  Bedtime routines are a challenge in our house because once out of a crib, your kids can get up and wander and trying to bolt them into their rooms isn’t practical. Our 5 and 3 year old sons share a room, so we get them ready for bed together every night. Trying to stagger bedtimes if they don’t share a room is inconvenient, and trying to do it when they share a room is near impossible. This routine includes reading them stories from one of the books in their room. They enjoy this and usually we let them each pick at least one book. Sometimes the bedtime routine gets put off because we’re tired, the kids aren’t ready to go to bed, or just clearly full of so much energy that trying to immediately get them settled down to go to sleep would be futile. On one of these particular nights, I just didn’t feel like leaving all the lights on in the room to go through the process but they weren’t tired enough where I could expect them to just fall asleep. So my wife put me on the spot and said to them, “Daddy’s going to tell you a story,” to which I wondered what kind of incoherent jumbled mess am I capable of stringing together in this moment?  My head then went to the many movies I’ve seen and the first thing that came to my mind was the plot of the 1987 comedy, Adventures in Babysitting. So retelling the story as best as I remember it, and removing the bad parts like the limo driver attempting to shoot his wife’s lover and Brad getting a switchblade thrown into his foot on the L train, I mostly focused on Thor having a tow truck and saving the day for them. Stumbling through that was much more entertaining for them than whatever jumbled mess I could have come up with on my own at that hour.  They still weren’t sleeping, so I thought of what else I could pull out of my movie memory. Forrest Gump was the first thing that came to mind. I talked about the little boy who had braces on his legs and made a friend named Jenny on the bus to school, then met a friend named Bubba (removing the Vietnam parts and making Lieutenant Dan a more approachable fellow). I kept the ping pong world tour in there, the shrimp boat and fortune of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and had myself another wondrous tale of a little boy not giving up on his dreams of becoming a shrimp boat captain. There are few, if any better mantras for a kid than “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

They were a little sleepy by this time, so I immediately jumped into the plot of another Hanks classic, Big. Now I was on a roll like Jimmy Dugan managing the Rockford Peaches to the championship game in A League of Their Own. By the time Josh Baskin turned back into his normal child self both kids were fast asleep and I had a new tool in the dad’s toolbox of tired bedtime routines: bedtime stories by Tom Hanks proxy. This brief experience brought me to think of other ideas as Tom Hanks has a filmography rich with stories that could work for this in the future. All credit due to him, the filmmakers, writers, crews, and everyone else involved in the making of these timeless films leaving indelible memories for me and so many others to enjoy all these years later as we try anything to get our kids to sleep peacefully at night. These are as simple as remembering the basic plot, and adapting the story removing/adding whatever you think is suitable. Unfortunately they don’t give out awards for Best Adapted Bedtime Story during awards season:

Cast Away: For this one I made the Fed Ex plane a boat that got shipwrecked on an island in a storm so I didn’t have to explain the plane crash scene. Most everything else works, and his companion,Wilson the volleyball, is very kid-friendly.  The Terminal: Haven’t tried this one yet, but the thought of a guy living in the airport probably sounds as much fun to little kids as it is terrifying to adults. Splash: Boy meets mermaid and falls in love, how easy is that? Turner & Hooch: Take out the part about his friend getting killed and make it a story about a man fighting crime with his dog.  Apollo 13: Make it less scary, kids love stories about outer space and rocket ships.

Joe Versus the Volcano: Not sure what to do with this one, but it has a volcano and a tribe that worships orange soda. There’s a kid’s story somewhere in there.   A League of Their Own: Stillwell angel as Jimmy Dugan’s arch nemesis is a fun plot point to explore further.  The Money Pit: Young husband and wife work on their dream home, it’s practically Up only the house stays on the ground and falls apart.

Catch Me If You Can: Young boy wanted to fly on airplanes and help the good guys catch the check forgers, never mind the dicey details in between.  Sully: Captain has a miracle on the Hudson, lands a plane on the water, everyone lives!

Saving Mr. Banks: Walt Disney becomes friends with author P.L. Travers and their friendship leads to the classic film Mary Poppins.  That Thing You Do: A group of friends form a rock band and have a hit record on the radio. As for the rest of his popular filmography, aside from Toy Story which you’re not going to tell your kids any better than the films already do, these are some Tom Hanks classics you might want to skip due to content:

The ‘Burbs Saving Private Ryan Philadelphia The Green Mile Road to Perdition The Da Vinci Code Charlie Wilson’s War Captain Phillips 

This same approach can work with countless other classic films, but Tom Hanks might be the only actor of the modern era with such a rich catalog to choose from for relatively new parents. When your day has been long, you’re running on empty, but you want to give your kids the bedtime story they deserve: Houston, you won’t have a problem.

Listening to:

Randy Newman, “Strange Things”

#dadonbuswithheadphones #dadblog #parenting #parentingtips #TomHanks #bedtime #LifeIsLikeABoxOfChocolates