My ten year old daughter and I went to see the movie “Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds Concert 3D Movie”. We were one of those that went on the first weekend of it’s release, back when it was a “limited engagement”. I never for a moment thought it would only show for a week but my daughter really wanted to go and was worried we’d miss it. All it took was one “What if you’re wrong mom?” to convince me to go at 8 am on Sunday morning for double the usual ticket price.
It was a good movie – I enjoyed it and my daughter and all the other tweeners, teens and younger girls loved it. It would havebeen nice if there was another song or two, but all in all a good movie.
Over the past week or so there has been a lot of airtime devoted to discussing how Miley Cyrus and her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, did not wear their seatbelts. Personally I don’t even remember the scene with them in the Range Rover. I asked my daughter if she remembers anything about Miley and her father not wearing seatbelts. She replied that she did not pay attention to whether they put on a seatbelt. According to my daughter it is an automatic thing that when you get in a car you put it on.
We have always had the rule that everyone puts on a seatbelt. When my children were young enough and small enough for car seats and booster seats they used them. They know we will not move the car unless everyone is buckled up properly. My children know when they get in a car, any car, they buckle up. As my daughter said, it does not matter what we see someone else do, the rule is “Buckle Up!”. She went on to say “I don’t care what they did, it was just acting in a movie. I know right from wrong.” I am happy to know that she thinks like this. We once spent 15 minutes digging out
a seatbelt in my father-in-law’s car so it is definitely a habit.
I have always instilled in my children the importance of wearing seatbelts. I share the story of my car accident many years ago, long before they were born. The force of the impact in that car accident was enough to rip the front seat from the floor of the car. I stayed buckled to the seat which got stuck by the dashboard. My life was saved because I was wearing a seatbelt.
Perhaps she is influenced by a hazy memory of a car accident we were in. She was almost 2 years old and I was in my final days of pregnancy with my son when we were in an accident. She was safely buckled in her car seat and I was wearing a seatbelt. She did not even suffer a scratch or bump. I also escaped injury although I did have labor pains and put quite a scare into many. The fire department and other emergency personnel credited her lack of injuries to her being properly buckled up in a car seat. A month or so earlier we had stopped by a car seat check that was operated by a AAA and they had made sure our car seats were properly installed.
I can understand the disappointment many have with Miley and her dad not wearing a seatbelt, but I tend to think most did not even notice the lack of seatbelts. I wish the Disney company had put a little more effort into ensuring that the movie encouraged good habits. Having said that, I think the emphasis is still on parents to make sure their children automatically buckle up. If they’ve been doing it since they were born it will be automatic. Besides it’s the law in most areas.
All in all Miley Cyrus seems to be a postive role model. Everyone makes a mistake. I am sure they will correct the scene before it’s released on dvd so this will all be a distant memory, that is if the children even noticed in the first place.
My last thought on the Hannah Montana movie is not really about the movie. What I still wonder is – why in the world were most of the people in the packed theater eating nachos with cheese, popcorn and hotdogs at 8 o’clock in the morning?
