As a kid one of my favorite movies was Ratatouille (and it still is!), And one of the reasons for that is because the stakes are so low. The worst outcome is that Remy doesn't get to realize his dream of being a chef, or maybe that he's killed but that doesn't seem likely for the movie. Contrast that with something like WALL-E, where basically the continued existence of the human race and the planet Earth hang in the balance, or the scene in the Garfield Movie where he almost causes several passenger trains to crash and potentially kill dozens.
As a kid, I remember thinking that having such extreme life or death or even apocalyptic stakes for kids movies was unnecessary, it just made me feel stressed out and upset rather than excited lol
Big stakes are fine in kids movies imo. It's more about the way those stakes are presented to the viewer. In Star Wars the stakes are galactic, but they don't spend time showing you suffering, starving aliens being brutalized under a magical Fascist Space Regime. They just kind of go "Hey Empire Bad". Through an adult's scope of reference the stakes wil seem higher because they have more knowledge of Fascism.
In Monster's Inc they don't have to explain that monster society will break down without energy. Having Boo in the wrong universe away from her parents is enough for kids to understand that she needs to go home.