Kids need stories.
We live in a culture where kids have heard more scary things than they ever did growing up. Kids know more about the sadness in the world than ever before. We see the outworking of this in the anxiety and worry in our kids at a younger age and in a more intense fashion than has ever been seen. Kids are hearing news stories of murder and watching violence in the halls of their schools. Our kids are being sexualized at a younger and younger age and as a result, are losing their capacity for friendship. As adults in their lives, we so often feel helpless.
Our reflex as parents to protect our kids from sorrow is to shield them from the world. This is no good either. This does nothing to prepare them for future sorrow. It creates naive adults who don’t have the skills to cope with sorrow or identify and challenge the evil that they see all around them.
I side with Lewis. When asked about protecting kids from evils that would frighten them. Lewis believes that we should both protect our kids from the evils of this world and prepare them for the evil in their world, he said this:
“Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism, and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu [State Police in the USSR] and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book. Nothing will persuade me that this causes an ordinary child any kind or degree of fear beyond what it wants, and needs, to feel. For, of course, it wants to be a little frightened.” – C.S. Lewis
Since your kids will face cruel enemies the way to help them is to prepare them for those enemies. We do this by telling them stories of knights who had courage in the face of danger. We tell them that this world is not all there is. We remind them that God came into the world and made himself small.
The internet has made every sorrow around the world local. Our kids are bombarded by social media hot takes, and 24-hour news that manufactures disasters. Because disasters are what keep viewers glued to the news channel of their choice. Kids don’t need news they definitely don’t need social media. What kids need is for us to tell them stories, read them stories, and help them discover their own stories.
Tell your kids stories.
One of the best things you can do for your kids is to tell them your story the good the bad and the ugly. Challenges you faced and how you overcame those challenges. Tell them how you came to faith in Christ. The greatest gift you can give your kids is to tell them who they are and how to live in the place and in the story God has for them.
We think what our kids need is stuff, phones, video games, and vacations but what they need most is place. They need to know the stories about where they have come from they need to know their place in the history of their family and in the history of redemption. Tell your kids your story and teach them how to communicate their story to others. If you do not give your kids the grounding of the story of your family they will seek a story in lesser things. Rehearse with your kids the victories and the sorrows that have made you and your family who they are.
Read stories to your kids.
One of the best ways you can get your kids to live is a different story is to expose them to better stories. Do family worship with your kids and read them the series in the Bible the story of God’s love for them in Christ. It is only through the lens of God’s big story of his redeeming love for your kids that they will understand every other story they read.
Once your kids can read start giving them good books to read. Books that are filled with virtue and goodness, with tales from other worlds that help them live rightly in their own. Our world has lost the value that classic works of fiction can do for kids. We teach them to read so they can get into college and get a great job. The purpose of reading is not that. If gainful employment for the next generation is the goal of literacy we have lost our way. Our kids may succeed in business but will do so with an impoverished soul.
Help the discover their story.
With scripture as the foundation and your family history and classical stories as a framework, your kids will be equipped to understand and make sense of a world gone mad. When your kids understand who they are and more importantly whose they are they will not fall in love with lesser stories. Our children will be able to translate every experience in the vernacular of story. They will learn when to be brave and when to fight another day. Your kids will meet cruel enemies in Juinor High or on the field of battle. If they have no idea of heaven they will despair at the pain in this world. If your kids do not know of brave knights who fight dragons they will turn and run when they need to protect those who are weak.
C.S. Lewis was right kids need stories. In our, world of impoverished imaginations, our kids need them more than ever. Start telling them stories today.