Editor’s note: There are spoilers for “Toy Story 5” in this article.
When I first became a mom eight years ago, I had no idea what parenting style I would follow. The only thing I was certain about was that my kids wouldn’t have toys with batteries.
This wasn’t because of something I read or any advice I heard from our pediatrician. I found toys that make noise and light up utterly annoying, so I leaned heavily into old-school wooden Montessori toys.
My kids are now 8, 6, and 6, and their toys haven’t changed much. Sure, they now have Lego blocks and makeup kits, but I still hold the line on battery-powered toys. Even more so, toys with screens.
When I saw the trailer for “Toy Story 5” — showing a device resembling an iPad as the villain — I knew the movie would speak to me.
I wasn’t wrong.
We don’t allow screen time unless it’s a family movie
My kids are not allowed any screen time, unless it’s Friday night when we do “dinner and a movie.” We choose a movie together, and have dinner in front of our TV.
This sets us apart from many parents in our community, since they are way more flexible about screens. Often, when having meals with families who have kids the same age as ours, they’ll show up with their iPads or be handed a smartphone for the duration of dinner.
My kids are, of course, attracted to screens like moths to lightbulbs. And who am I to blame them? I often find myself doomscrolling, wasting hours of my downtime on reels I don’t even remember watching.
‘Toy Story 5’ shows the perspective of the toys when a screen comes into the picture
The whole premise of “Toy Story 5” is that Bonnie, the main character, gets a tablet-style device. Her parents want her to be able to make friends, and all the other kids are already using them, so they figure that will work for her too.
The toys spend the whole movie trying to reconnect with Bonnie, and show toys that have been abandoned by other kids in lieu of screens. There’s one scene that was a true gut punch: Woody, Jessie, and an army of Buzz Lightyears run through a house where every family member is staring at a glowing screen, not interacting with each other.
I don’t want that for my family. I want my kids playing with each other and leaning into imagination, creating worlds together, instead of being zombiefied in front of an app.
Kids grow up so fast
The screen-time theme is not the only one that resonated with me. In the movie, Jessie remembers her previous owner and how she stopped playing with toys at some point.
I got teary-eyed with the scene because I can see my kids getting older by the second. The chubby babies who once giggled nonstop as I played peek-a-boo were replaced with toddlers who had no walk mode; they would just run everywhere. Those toddlers were replaced with kindergartners who wanted to do everything themselves. And my oldest already looks like a teenager and calls me “bro” instead of “mom” more often than I’d like.
When we left the movie, I asked my kids what the message of “Toy Story 5” was, and my oldest replied quickly with “screens are evil.”
While that might be a slightly extreme version (spoiler: the tablet, known as Lilypad, does help the toys in the end), I appreciated that my kids understand why we parent the way we do.
Once we got home, my kids ran to the landline to call their friends and tell them all about the movie, just like I would’ve when I was their age after watching the first “Toy Story.”
