Last week, after both kids were finally asleep, I found myself scrolling through movie options when E.T. popped up. I hadn’t seen it since I was young, sitting cross-legged on my grandmother’s carpet, eating popcorn from a giant yellow bowl. Back then, I thought it was just a cool story about a kid who finds an alien. This time? I was sobbing into a throw pillow twenty minutes in, and not because of the flying bicycles.
What hit me was Elliott. This lonely kid in a house full of people who don’t really see him. His mom’s doing her best but she’s drowning in her own grief from the divorce. His brother’s too old to care. His sister’s too young to understand. And there’s Elliott, setting up that trail of Reese’s Pieces like breadcrumbs leading to someone who might finally need him as much as he needs them.
When children need something helpless to love
You know that phase when your kid suddenly becomes obsessed with caring for something? Ellie went through it last year with a half-dead succulent she named “Greeny.” She’d water it with a medicine dropper, sing to it, tell it about her day. At first I thought it was cute. Then I realized it started right after we’d moved houses and she’d left her best friend behind.
Kids pour love into small, helpless things when they’re processing big feelings they can’t name. Elliott feeding E.T. candy and teaching him words isn’t just childhood sweetness. It’s a child creating a world where he has control, where he’s needed, where his love has somewhere safe to go.
Think about it. How many times have you watched your child whisper secrets to their stuffed animals? Or insist on keeping that scraggly caterpillar in a jar with holes poked in the lid? They’re not just playing. They’re practicing being human in a world that often feels too big and unpredictable.
The weight of being the “good one”
What really got me was watching Elliott try so hard to hold everything together. He’s maybe eleven, and he’s keeping this massive secret, protecting E.T., managing his siblings, trying not to add to his mom’s stress. Sound familiar?
Ellie does this thing where she’ll quietly organize Milo’s toys when she thinks I’m having a hard day. She’s five. Five! Already she’s learned to read the room, to make herself smaller when things feel tense, to be the helper when she senses I’m overwhelmed.
Elliott hiding E.T. isn’t just about keeping a fun secret. It’s about being the child who doesn’t make waves, who handles things alone, who creates his own comfort because asking for it feels like too much. When E.T. gets sick and Elliott gets sick too, it’s not just movie magic. It’s what happens when kids carry weight that’s too heavy for them. They literally feel it in their bodies.
Why the government agents aren’t really the villains
Here’s what I didn’t understand as a kid: those scary government guys with their plastic tunnels and walkies-talkies? They’re every adult who means well but completely misses the point. They see a problem to solve, not a relationship to honor.
Remember when they quarantine the whole house? Elliott’s screaming that they’re killing E.T., and the adults are explaining protocols and procedures. Nobody’s listening to the kid who actually knows what E.T. needs. Nobody’s asking Elliott what might help.
I see myself in those hazmat suits sometimes. Like when Ellie’s upset about something that seems tiny to me but enormous to her, and I rush to fix it instead of just sitting with her in it. Or when I dismiss her elaborate explanations about why her toys need to be arranged a certain way. How often do we bulldoze over our kids’ emotional truths because we’re focused on the practical solution?
The bike chase is really about trust
That iconic scene where the kids race away on their bikes, E.T. making them fly? As a kid, I thought it was just cool special effects. Now I see it differently.
It’s Elliott’s friends choosing to believe him even when it makes no sense. It’s kids protecting something precious without fully understanding why it matters, just knowing that it does. It’s what happens when children are given the chance to be brave for something that matters to them.
My years teaching kindergarten taught me this: kids will rise to exactly the level of trust you place in them. Those boys on bikes aren’t just having an adventure. They’re learning that sometimes the most important things can’t be explained to adults, that sometimes you have to protect wonder even when the world wants to dissect it.
Finding your own E.T. moments
After the movie ended, I sat in the dark living room for a while, thinking about all the E.T.s in our house. The snail collection in a shoebox. The “sick” dandelions in water glasses on the windowsill. The elaborate backstories for each stuffed animal’s personality and needs.
These aren’t just cute kid things. They’re practice runs for empathy. They’re safe spaces to work out big feelings. They’re proof that children instinctively know how to heal themselves if we just give them room.
Your kid’s E.T. might be the imaginary friend who shows up after a new sibling arrives. Or the way they insist on saving every roly-poly from the sidewalk. Or how they need that one specific lovey arranged just so at bedtime. Whatever form it takes, it’s serving a purpose we might not fully see.
Maybe Spielberg knew that every house has a little bit of Elliott in it. A child trying to make sense of change, looking for something to take care of, building their own small world of connection in the midst of chaos. And maybe he knew that every parent watching would recognize that tender, fierce love children pour into the things that need them.
So now when my kids drag home another “pet” stick or insist on checking on their rock family, I try to remember Elliott and E.T. I try to see what they’re really doing: practicing being human, one small act of care at a time.
