We have a rotation at our house for Friday movie nights. Each family member has a turn picking what we watch — the whole exercise created to prevent what felt like an endless argument of “I never get to pick the movie!” Most Fridays out of the month, the rotation works pretty well. However, every single time we end up on my youngest daughter, Aspen, who happens to be 8 years old — seven years younger than her older brother Tristan, who is 15, and 5 years younger than her older sister Norah, who is 13 — the ritual falls apart, because in the teenagers’ opinion, she always picks “baby movies.”

I brace myself for battle each time it’s Aspen’s turn to pick. When she recently picked Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness, you’d think she’d just asked the family to watch Baby Einsteins, or the dreaded Caillou. Not that any of us knew what we were to expect out of Chickenhare. All we knew about the film was that it’d been burning up the Top 10 on Netflix for some time. Nevertheless, a cornerstone of family movie night is popcorn and ice cream, and Chickenhare or no, my two teenagers were not going to pass up an opportunity for sweets and salts. So they grudgingly settled onto the sofa for Aspen’s movie night pick.

We were maybe 20 minutes into the movie, my teenagers watching with lifeless expressions, eating ice cream, and groaning from time to time, when King Peter looked at the young Chickenhare and told him something that gave me a moment of pause. King Peter was trying to console his adoptive son after he missed his big shot at becoming an adventurer by failing to pass the Royal Adventure Society Trials. King Peter looks at his son and asks what he thinks is the greatest treasure he has ever found on all of his adventures. Chickenhare thinks, and as he does, the king tells him it’s when he found an abandoned baby while searching for the Hamster of Darkness.

That baby was Chickenhare, and in true teenager form, Tristan and Norah rolled their eyes and called the scene “cheesy” and “fake,” all of it incredibly on-brand and cliché even for my teenagers. I leaned over and told them both that I felt exactly like King Peter. I said it with great sincerity, which wasn’t hard because it was the absolute truth.

I said, “Not that I’m a king or a great adventurer searching for treasures or anything, but you kids are my greatest accomplishment.” I told my oldest, Tristan, how scared I was when he was born because I didn’t know what to expect. But once he was here, I felt so at peace, like he was always supposed to be here with me. And I reminded Norah about how her lungs were underdeveloped at birth and how she spent two weeks in the NICU, and once she was cleared to come home, well... I’d never felt joy like that before. I don’t know if I ever will again. Then I looked at Aspen, our youngest, and told her that I was scared to have a third child after having her sister in the NICU. But she was born without any bumps in the road, and now everything she does makes me smile. That is one of the most amazing gifts I’ve ever been given.

“All three of your births changed my life in the most wonderful ways,” I told them. “Ways that really have only made my life better. I know this might sound ‘cheesy,’ but it’s genuinely true.”

Perhaps it was the sincerity in my voice, or maybe it was the tone, I don’t really know, but something remarkable happened: None of them rolled their eyes, even my teenagers. What they did, however, was struggle to hide their smiles. And for me that meant everything, because, honestly, it was something I’d always wanted to say, but it wasn’t until Chickenhare that I’d found the right words.

My teen’s dropped their cynicism over Chickenhare after that, which I will say, was refreshing.  And as they got more into the movie, it seemed clear that they were a little blindsided by how fun it was. It has this wholesome Indiana Jones adventure vibe, with a poor Chickenhare living a fish-out-of-water life, longing to be a treasure-seeking adventurer like his adoptive father but never fitting in as a chicken or a hare. There was a lively skunk, Meg, who had all the kids, and even my wife and me, giggling, particularly when she skunked-out that tavern during a brawl. Ten minutes after my heartfelt speech, and all of us, my teenagers included, were completely enthralled in this movie they’d labeled “for babies,” both of them watching as their ice cream melted because they’d become more interested in the adventure than their snacks. Overall, Aspen nailed it with this family movie night. It was a hit for the whole family.

And once the movie was over, and everyone’s ice cream was uneaten and melted, and we’d all given Aspen a long-deserved pat on the back for an awesome movie pick, we all got another bowl and talked about highlights from Chickenhare, all of us laughing, my kids clearly feeling like great treasures.