Toy Story

Oh, the 90s! The decade of computer animation and innovation! Long before Disney bought Pixar outright (in 2006) studio collaborations such as 1995’s Toy Story were highly anticipated and paved the way for many fan favorites we enjoy today. Throw in some fantastic vocal talents and a heartwarming soundtrack, and you have the perfect ingredients for a 90s blockbuster.

This movie can be easily enjoyed by almost all ages as indicated by the G rating due to the quick pace and colorful, slapstick humor for children and the endearing storyline and wordplay for teens and adults.

Foster/Adoptive families can benefit from this film, though foster care or adoption is not explicitly discussed. This movie features themes such as separation and reunification of a family-like unit, jealousy, identity, communicating needs, cultural awareness, and problem-solving.

** Spoilers Could Be Ahead **

How Is This Relevant To Adoption & Foster Care?

While this movie does not directly reference foster care or a traditional adoptive family, this film does have several themes that do relate to the territory. The story revolves around toys coming to terms with feelings of abandonment, jealousy, comparison, separation anxiety, abuse, and grief. Many of our children can relate to feeling all of the above and struggle to self-regulate appropriately while working through these difficult events and emotions. This movie can be used as a tool to help facilitate discussions after family movie nights to help put big abstract feelings into words and pictures for children who may not be able to directly connect feelings of abandonment and jealousy to their behaviors. This can also be a beneficial tool in talking with children already in the home before, during, or after foster placements to check in and reaffirm that children already in the home are not going to be “replaced” by foster children. As the toys learn in the end, the more the merrier!

Discussion Points:

• Feeling Discarded and Abandoned
  The children we interact with have felt thrown away, abandoned, and replaced. Children may relate to Buzz feeling “crash landed” on another planet and trying desperately to go home. Other children will related to Woody feeling pushed aside by the shiny, cool, new housemate. Often our children will struggle with connecting their emotions to their behaviors, and this movie can allow them to see and explore these connections.
• Problem Solving and Team Work
  Children, whether established as part of the household or new, are able to see that housemates can work through their differences and work as a team through hard situations, even if they are experiencing the same challenge differently. Children who have grown up in the system may not have had consistent examples of cooperation and compromise. Biological children may struggle with having different expectations from their new foster siblings and having to split time and attention more than they are accustomed.
• Communicating Feelings and Needs
  This movie can also be used to help support biological children in appropriately expressing their feelings concerning new housemates and helping welcome foster/adoptive children. Biological children may not have much of a reference point for how coming into a new home/culture can feel, just as Buzz experiences culture shock when leaving “Star Command” to reside in Andy’s Room.

Cautionary Points:

• Discussions of Being Thrown Away/Abandoned/Replaced
  Children who enter the child welfare system or adoption often deal with several emotions (i.e. – sadness, grief, anger, denial, etc.) that connect to feelings of being abandoned by their primary caregivers. These themes may help children by giving them someone to relate to. However, every child responds to trauma from abandonment or removal differently, so a caregiver should be aware of such themes.
• Abuse and Mutilation of Toys
  Though the characters who are physically harmed are toys, they are given life and meaning in the film and appear lifelike. Some children may react negatively to the “living” toys being dismembered, blown up, and spoken to aggressively. Most of these scenes involve a human boy named Sid.
• Mild Adult Humor
  Some of the jokes may go right over most children’s heads. However, some children may have been exposed to inappropriate subject matter ,and this may invoke inappropriate behavior. (i.e. – Mr. Potato Head removing lips and moving them toward rear end to communicate “kissing butt,” “lazer envy,” etc.)
• Characters Pointing Laser at Toy’s Heads
  Throughout the movie, Buzz is shown pointing a lazer-beam in a weapon-like manner at various toys’ heads. This resembles a laser sight on a gun. This could be triggering for children who have been exposed to gun violence.
• Implied Drinking/Drunken Behavior
  Children could be triggered by Buzz’s behavior in the tea party scene. Some children come from homes with substance abuse exposure or domestic violence that occurs alongside substance abuse. Though the drink is specifically referred to as “tea,” Buzz slurs speech and both he and Woody speak as if he is drinking an alcoholic beverage.