An approach to finding teaching moments on families and child development in Disney films.
In the interest of finding "teaching moments in film" for psychiatric education and education on child development, the author describes an approach to analyzing Disney--and potentially other children's films--based on specifically observing family structure at the beginning and ending of the story, developmental stage and gender of the protagonist, the developmental crisis, and the external change agent and/or stressor. The author considered a convenience sample of ten popular Disney films. A wide variety of family structures and developmental stages and challenges were observed in the reviewed films. A matrix approach such as the one illustrated may help psychiatric educators to select effective teaching moments from Disney and other children's films.