We tend to think of reading to children in utilitarian terms: better SAT scores and verbal skills, improved abstract thinking and reading comprehension. We assume that we are sharing stories for the best of times, for positive trajectories only.
What others’ life experience shows is that the gift of stories is a treasure in times of distress, pain, sadness, and grief. Stories are a path to connection and resilience. As Sarah Mackenzie has observed, what children see when they listen to and read stories (good stories, that is) is a character faces obstacles and overcomes them, over and over again.
Overcoming is not a grand matter of triumph in most of ordinary life. In this world, hampered by hunger, lack of sleep, disordered appetites, and our personal faults, our successes will be modest. But when we have humility, we can accept the smallness of our success and open up the possibility of God working through us in a grand and definitive triumph.
When we share stories with our children, no matter their age, we give them a mirror to see who they really are and what they are capable of.
Ken Guidroz illustrates this beautifully in an essay he shared on Writing Class Radio. In the episode, entitled “Letters to My Son in Prison—Why Writing Matters,” Guidroz tells the story of his son’s rock bottom and his own near loss of faith, in himself as a father and in God. It is about as raw as any essayist can get, bringing the reader into that place of uncertainty and pain.
Guidroz artfully crafts the essay so that it is not about self-pity or voyeurism. The details are sparse, but we learn that his son was on drugs and killed a man while driving a car. This crime, which Guidroz describes understandably as unforgiveable, is the reason for his son’s prison sentence. Most of us want to firmly separate ourselves from such a grim reality. That will never be us, we think. That is the life of someone else who has made mistakes.
And yet, there is an uncomfortable friction we cannot ignore. Guidroz is a man who clearly loves his son and has tried to live a Christian life. We are all, in the end, merely trying to live well while also making our own mistakes, big and small. Can we so confidently assume that our lives will not have what Guidroz describes elsewhere as our own “son in prison,” our own form of loss, despair, or secret pain?
As the essay progresses, Guidroz recounts the intense, at times painful, healing and reconnection he discovered by exchanging letters with his adult child. In letters, the men could share thoughts, memories, and aspirations that they likely never would have put into words otherwise.
As with all good writing, there is also reading. Beginning with the Biblical account of King David, a man who killed another in an unforgiveable injustice, the father and son experience stories together in their letters. The image of Guidroz’s son turning out his reading light in his prison cell with tears in his eyes after finishing “Crime and Punishment” is haunting. And it is also, in a world of such oppressive pessimism, hopeful.
By identifying with characters—whether King David or Raskolnikov—the dead end of failure, unforgiveness, and hopelessness is transformed. From that low place, a family can be restored, not without difficulty and pain, but with the possibility of deeper connection and more authentic love.
I cannot do the story justice in a short blurb. Listen to the essay for yourself or go ahead and read Guidroz’s book. He is also active on Substack where he offers further reflections on life experience and the written word.
Paying attention to the experience of others and the stories they tell can show us the bigger and more important reasons why we cultivate a world of stories in our homes. Every mother of a three-year-old wonders if her child will grow up to go to prison. But what if our child really does? What if any number of terrible mistakes, missteps, miscalculations and all the resulting pain awaits our tiny tot, should he live long enough. The particulars are unknowable, but we can know with certainty that he will make mistakes and endure pain. Let us share stories with our children to understand ourselves and offer them the opportunity to do the same.
