Transfiguring Adoption’s Overview:

In this installment of the Toy Story franchise the audience returns to Andy’s room to discover a significant amount of time has passed since Toy Story 2. Andy is now a young adult packing for college and trying to decide what to do with the toys that remain before he leaves… which leaves the toys in quite a predicament. Live in the attic to hope one day Andy has kids and retrieves them? Be donated to a daycare? Or, worst of all, be thrown away with the garbage?

The target audience appears to be children ages 4 and up. It also appears this movie would be best for foster and adoptive families as the movie is a fun film to watch together with some themes that relate to a child’s experience with foster care without showing a child going through trauma. There is a large emphasis on loss, transitions, and grief that children may relate to and be able to use as a medium to discuss difficult feelings concerning those subjects. This film is an excellent movie for a family to bond over movie night with some discussion for most ages for this reason.

** Spoilers Could Be Ahead **

How Is This Relevant To Adoption & Foster Care?

Right from the get go caregivers can quickly see how children may relate to Jessie’s worry of being abandoned, Woody’s struggle with loyalty to Andy, and the rest of the toys trying desperately to cope with the inevitable transition. Of course, some of these subjects may be hard for children to discuss but for some children talking about how Woody deals with transitions may be easier than talking about themselves. This movie can provide a wonderful opportunity for caregivers to bond with their children, talk about hard subjects, and reinforce their love and care over and over as they discuss the film.

Discussion Points:

• Abandonment and Grief
  No matter the reason a child enters the child welfare system, often the child will at some point struggle with feelings of abandonment. One teen I worked with once struggled with an immense amount of behaviors that seemed to always get her in trouble. She told me, “I’m just afraid if I don’t make sure someone will forget I’m here. And I can’t have that ever again.” Often children, as a part of the grief process, blame themselves for entering the child welfare system and fill in missing pieces of information with their imaginations. Others truly have been abandoned by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even previous foster placements. Caregivers love children and don’t want to see children suffer, so it’s easy for a caregiver to try to cheer up the child or distract them from their pain. However, when this happens it only delays the inevitable and the caregiver has violated that child’s right to grieve. We must remember: They didn’t sign up for this. Caregivers are in the best position to make sure that when a child does grieve they never have to do it alone.
• Transitions
  Even when a transition is a positive one, children who have endured trauma may react to change as a threat to their survival. And who can blame them? With multiple placement changes, caregiver changes, school changes, friend changes, and more it is completely valid that transitioning to the next school year or into an adoption may shake a child to their core. Children who have endured trauma often have an overactive stress activation system, meaning they are on red alert for survival at all times and this will be very difficult to reassure and change. For this reason caregivers should strive to be trauma-informed so that they can see past the meltdown and that a child is responding to a sense of feeling unsafe and desperately needs to be reassured and comforted.
• Loyalty Conflicts
  This is a very familiar issue across the board within foster and adoptive families. A child has their biological family, and though they may be abused and neglected, that was their first relationship that taught them how to love and be loved. They also have a caregiver (foster or adoptive parents often) who cares for them every day and gives them everything they could need. A child who has endured trauma may struggle to integrate all the support and love (and sometimes even be influenced by how the biological family or caregivers speak of one another) and feel they must “pick” a side. For this reason it is very important that caregivers be mindful of how they speak of the child’s biological family, whether they are present in the child’s life or not. We must remember that the biological family holds a large portion of your child’s identity, and when we fail to acknowledge them and what they contribute to the child we are failing to recognize a part of our child’s identity.

Cautionary Points:

• Cartoon action sequences
  These include a train robbery/rescue, sneaking out of a jail-like situation, stunts that involve jumping from great heights, outrunning a chipper and furnace, and violent interactions with hands/feet (i.e. – fist fights) and with weapons (i.e. – nunchucks, lasso). Caregivers should be prepared if their child has a tendency to mimic such actions at home.
• Inappropriate Punishments
  Characters are shown being tied up and blind folded as well as being placed in shelving baskets to represent imprisonment for punishment for misbehavior. A character is also put in seclusion overnight in a sandbox for punishment for misbehavior. This can be harmful for children who have endured traumas related to seclusion.
• A lot of sequences concerning abandonment
  Jessie experiences a panic attack about possibly being thrown away, toys are accidentally thrown away, toys believe Andy is flippant about their fate and does not care, Lotso Bear pulls toys into the trash with him, Lotso is verbally abusive to other toys in response to grief from abandonment, Woody lashes out at other toys verbally over being given away and feeling abandoned, Lotso, Chuckles and Big Baby being left at a rest stop, etc.). There are also sequences with toys getting their hopes up concerning reunification (i.e. – toys believing they can go back to Andy, Lotso, Chuckles and Big Baby returning to Daisy to find she got a new Lotso Hugs doll, toys going to Bonnie’s home, etc.). Children may be triggered by similar feelings due to traumas related to abandonment and feeling “thrown away”.
• Runaway behaviors
  The Toy Soldiers are shown escaping before they potentially could have been thrown away by Andy. They reappear at Bonnie’s house during end credits with no ramifications for running away and being in a potentially dangerous situation on the outside. Caregivers should be aware in cases where children struggle with runaway behaviors in response to fear.
• Harmful and abusive systems in place in Sunnyside Daycare
  The daycare is run with a mob-like air and Lotso keeps new toys under lock and guard to ensure he and his cronies remain in the coveted Butterfly room. This leaves toys he does not favor in the toddler room where they are openly abused and harmed by toddlers in play. Lotso created this system intentionally to harm other toys and maintain control over the daycare and perpetuate the abuses over and over. This may be triggering due to past traumas in the family home, in previous foster placements, or negative experiences with congregant care.
• Lotso is a horribly manipulative and abusive character
  While yes, we can identify he has endured trauma Lotso is an example of what happens then trauma is not transformed. Lotso lies, cheats, steals, and controls others with violence and with very verbally abusive statements to others. Lotso cycles between overly positive rewards and very hard punishments which mimic cycles seen in domestic violence and traumatic relationships of similar natures. Caregivers should be prepared to monitor a child who has had such experiences for trauma reactivity.
• The toys are shown being put in a trash bag
  This can be harmful specifically to children from foster care due to the use of trash bags for packing up belongings before moving placements last minute (though agencies are certainly trying not to do this anymore) and the connection may persist for a child.
• Toys are in mortal peril multiple times.
  They are crushed by objects (and in Buzz’s case believed to be dead), crushed in a dump truck, and almost sent through an incinerator.
• Buzz is shown to be “reset”
  He is basically brainwashed to perpetuate abuses and control on behalf of Lotso’s gang. He requires being restrained to be reset (putting him in Spanish mode) and then is only righted with head trauma from having a TV dropped on him.
• Bathroom humor
  There are a few subtle bits with toilet humor concerning “Linkin Logs” in the sandbox.
• Disturbing character
  The monkey acting as Lotso’s surveillance I personally found to be very creepy in appearance and demeanor.
• Undressing Behavior
  Ken is tied up in his underwear when detained by Barbie. This does make sense in context of the scene (as Barbie is ripping up his favorite clothing as motivation to get Ken to spill information) but caregivers should be aware if your child has a history of trauma involving being tied up or undressed.
• Lots of transitions and grief are shown
  Andy and his mother have a moment to say goodbye, the toys have several moments where they are processing grief related to abandonment, there is a VERY emotional goodbye between Andy and the toys at the end, and toys respond to grief from losing toys before the events of the film.

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NOTE: Inclusion on these lists does not necessarily mean endorsement. Furthermore, with all our resources, we highly recommend you preview them first to determine if there are any trauma triggers that your child may not be ready to handle. Transfiguring Adoption does not intend for its reviewers nor its reviews to be professional, medical or legal advice. These reviews and discussion guides are intended to help parents to better be able to connect and understand their children who come from traumatic backgrounds.