Thanks to very aggressive marketing, my mostly blind son has been bombarded with talk and hype of Finding Dory for months, and he's become obsessed. The only movie he has ever watched was Finding Nemo. And he did like it (enough to sit in front of it for 1.5 hours, which is a tall task for him), but he has a lot of baseline anxiety, so Marlin's anxiety-inducing search for his son was enough to nearly bring him to tears.
Despite this, he could not wait to see Finding Dory. He has only been speaking English for about a year, so he usually can't keep up with audio description since they talk so fast, but we recently heard about an app called Disney Anywhere that does more simplified voice description through your phone, and we were eager to give it a shot.
The movie was great, as expected. It was a sweet story with incredible animation (the octopus was genius), and had some good lessons about not only believing in yourself, but about how sometimes your disability can actually be an advantage. I have kids with dyslexia, ADHD, hearing impairment, and vision impairment, and I can give you ways that each of those things have at one time or another been a blessing.
I read many articles about the movie beforehand, and many blogs stating that it was not a good movie for adopted kids. Though I value and respected those others' opinions, I personally knew that telling my kids (especially the Dory-obsessed one) that we wouldn't be seeing the movie would not go well at all. I also knew that I have worried and stressed over other movies warned to me (Annie and Kung Fu Panda 3, most recently) and they turned out to have no negative effects on my adopted daughter.
Basically Dory (because of her short term memory loss) was separated from her parents very young and never could find them again. There is always loss in adoption. And some kids feel that loss more than others, I think. I am very open with my kids about talking about their first moms. Maybe as they get older, it will become a bigger source of sadness and loss for them, but for now it just seems to be something that is a part of their story, but they don't automatically go there every time I expect them to. I asked Kate afterwards how she felt during the movie when Dory got lost and couldn't find her parents and she said, "Sad. I felt sad for her." But she was quick to laugh at the funny parts, and overall said she loved the movie.
She is also visually impaired, and her favorite character was the near sighted whale shark, Destiny, who kept running into the walls of the aquarium. (Today at Target she spent her own money to buy her own plush "Destiny," because she can never have too many stuffed animals.) So, I guess I'd say we are a family that doesn't take things too seriously. I mean we are aware of their pain, and address the loss of adoption, but if that loss makes it hard to watch a movie, then I view it as a bridge of opportunity to bring up some difficult conversations, and talk openly about their feelings.
On Mothers Day I usually will bring up birth moms and have a time to talk and pray for them. This year, my (then) 9 year old daughter told me that she didn't want to do that. Why did we have to talk about her? She really had nothing to do with her anymore. I said, "But she does! Without her, we wouldn't have you! And she loved you. I am sure she thinks about you, and I think about her enough to honor her with a prayer for her life."
Well that might make more sense to her when she's 12 or 13 than it does now. But for the short term, I'm going to allow my adopted kids to watch these movies that address loss, pain and sacrificial love so that their little hearts and minds will be stirred to not run from the hard conversations, but to address their feelings-- so that we can tackle them together.
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