My favorite movie as a young child was Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) [1]. My family didn’t have cable television, so when Mary Poppins was scheduled to be broadcast, my parents would let my sister and I stay up past bedtime to watch. We would snuggle together on the couch, eat popcorn, and sing along with Julie Andrews; after watching, our house would be filled with our voices singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” for days [2]. As a child, I loved the scene where the children pop into the brightly colored world of chalk paintings; the magic of their costumes, the singing, and the carousel horses turned racehorses tickled my imagination. I identified with the children in the movie and wished for similar magical fun. My early learning from Mary Poppins reflected a child’s exploration of physics and reality: no, you can’t actually jump through chalk pictures into another world. No, snapping your fingers at your toys doesn’t result in a clean room. Fortunately, my parents put a stop to my experiments with heights and umbrellas before I learned the hard way that no, my rate of descent would not be slowed by holding an open umbrella. But children grow up; as I got older, Mary Poppins faded from my memory. We got cable, my parents divorced, and my sister and I moved on to other movies and television shows. Perhaps unsurprisingly a different Walt Disney movie, The Parent Trap (1961), became our favorite for a few years as we processed our new family circumstances [3]. The sweetness and magic of Mary Poppins seemed less relevant as we moved through our teenage years.

I rediscovered Mary Poppins when my own daughter was a young child, hoping to share a magical memory with her. She loved the movie just as I had, and we watched it together over and over courtesy of instant video and streaming services. I still found the movie enchanting, but now as a psychiatrist and a parent of a young child, my attention was caught by different things. Mary Poppins spoke to me where I was in my life at the time, prompting a series of reflections and learning. The broken family relationships struck me; the father Mr. Banks in his rigid comfortable narcissism and the mother Winifred in her absence and hypocrisy seemed to exemplify narcissistic parenting [4]. The children’s behavior seemed an obvious result of them feeling alone, unwanted, and unseen. They acted out by running away and playing tricks on their nannies in a desperate bid for attention and care. Into this painful family dynamic, the titular character Mary Poppins, a magical nanny, appears, wafting in on a flying umbrella in response to the children’s advertisement. With the assistance of her friend Bert, a local jack of all trades, Mary Poppins creatively generates chaos that disrupts the entire household. Her fantastic outings communicate to the children that they are seen and wanted, while bewildering and frustrating their parents, particularly Mr. Banks. This leads to painful moments of conflict but then ultimately to growth. By the end of the movie, parents and children have reconciled and spend a beautiful afternoon flying kites together, coming full circle with the children’s wistful hope at the start of the movie. As a new parent, I took to heart the need to listen to my daughter, to give her my time and attention, and to allow her to be the child she is, not the child I imagined having.

As a therapist, I identified with the character of Mary Poppins. I was impressed with how she was able to support the family through the destabilization of their old, dysfunctional order, providing “A Spoonful of Sugar” to help her medicine go down [5]. In a scene of confrontation with Mr. Banks over the children’s outings, she excels at maintaining an empathic connection with him through calm presence, eye contact, attentive listening, encouragement to elaborate, and empathic validation. These are the techniques we teach beginning psychotherapists [6], and Mary Poppins uses them brilliantly. Through her skill, she maintains her relationship with the family in a difficult moment and persuades Mr. Banks to take the children on an outing, an action that leads to the crisis which resolves in the family’s healing. Mary Poppins also follows principles of family therapy by not taking sides between family members [7]. She is warm and supportive towards the children, and at the same time helps them accept the reasonable boundaries desired by their parents, enforcing activities such as cleaning up their toys and going to bed on time. After she persuades Mr. Banks to take the children on an outing, she prepares the children by encouraging empathy and a better understanding of their father.

My daughter grew older too, moving on to other movies in her turn. My primary professional role has now transitioned into education. Still, the soundtrack for Mary Poppins remains on our family playlist for car rides. Recently, I realized I now see Mary Poppins through the eyes of a medical educator. As I grow into my professional role, I have begun to study how adults learn. One theory of adult learning posits a recurring cycle of concrete, disruptive events that create opportunities for reflection and observation. These reflections and observations lead to the construction and synthesis of new ideas, which are then tested through real-world application leading to new concrete events which continue the cycle [8]. My new focus in Mary Poppins is how Mr. Banks learns and grows through the events of the film following a cycle of experiential learning, and my identification has shifted to Bert as an exemplar of an adult educator. Through Mary Poppin’s creative chaos, Mr. Banks is confronted with a series of new experiences that do not fit into his previous worldview. His attempt to take the children on an outing culminates in his children running away from him after he attempts to force his youngest child to open a savings account at his bank in order to please the senior bankers. The children’s cries during the conflict create panic in the bank building, causing a run on the bank for which Mr. Banks is blamed. This is a concrete experience that Mr. Banks could not have imagined for himself. He returns home that evening reflecting on the ruination of his professional hopes, his frustration with Mary Poppins’s seeming nonsense, and his bewilderment at being placed outside the role he expected for himself. He vents his feelings to Bert, who empathizes and provides his own spoonful of sugar before the medicine of analyzing and constructing new ideas. Bert gently redirects Mr. Banks by taking his comments to their logical extreme. He helps Mr. Banks recognize the importance of being engaged with and present for his children while they are young, before he loses the opportunity to time. Their conversation helps Mr. Banks begin to synthesize the idea of prioritizing his role as a father over his role as a professional. As they speak, Mr. Banks is called to an evening meeting at the bank, where he demonstrates his ability to apply his new ideas. He is able to laugh at the ridiculous pomposity of the meeting called to fire him, perplexing his former bosses. He leaves the bank singing and disappears for the evening. In the morning, he presents the children with their repaired kite and takes them out to fly it, displaying his integration of these new concepts and engaging in a new concrete experience by spending time with the children in a way they value. His framework has shifted through the process of experiential learning, leaving him a happier man and a more connected and effective parent.

These ideas from Mary Poppins come to mind as I facilitate a small group of second-year medical students and doctoral nurse practitioner students during a reflective seminar on the topic of addiction. The students have attended an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous the week prior to the seminar and have shared their reactions and reflections with me in writing. They are unsettled by this new experience; some of them are puzzled finding individuals struggling with alcohol use disorder who are so much like themselves. Others are sad and angry as memories of family members with substance use disorders are awakened. They are asking questions: “How will I care for patients who continue behaviors that hurt their health? How do I empathize and also set limits as a health care provider?” I am unsettled too; my role in this seminar is not to be the expert or provide answers to their questions. Small groups are always creatively chaotic; each session is new and unpredictable. In this setting, I have the challenging job of helping the students create and hold a space that is both safe and brave, a space where they can engage with me and with each other to ask their hard questions and synthesize answers that will carry them into and through their application in medical practice. In this moment, I need to be like Bert. I need to provide a sense of psychological safety and comfort that allows students to experience and verbalize their reactions and questions. That sense of safety is the spoonful of sugar. I also need to ask more questions help them examine their ideas, confront their biases, and challenge them to synthesize a nuanced, complex response to patients struggling with substance use disorders. That questioning is the medicine that I hope leads to learning and growth as medical professionals. I smile as I think about it; four decades later, Mary Poppins is still teaching me.