Our oldest boys, Manny and AJ, arrived at our home late on a Friday night. They came with one small backpack containing ill-fitting pajamas and a single diaper each. Hidden at the bottom of the bag were two worn and tattered children’s books. Amid the uncertainty and fear that accompanied this big transition for the boys, these stories offered an opportunity for connection. After tucking the boys into their new and unfamiliar beds, I sat on the floor between them and read the books aloud.
On that very first day of our foster care journey, we discovered how to share words and connect with our kids through stories.
AJ and Manny came to us drowning in a sea of confusing, indecipherable words. At a time in their development when they should have been discovering language and acquiring hundreds of words, they moved between six foster homes that spoke four distinct languages. Transitions and trauma halted their development. The brothers did not respond to verbal cues or directions. The deficit was so profound that the pediatrician recommended a hearing test. The audiologist initially concluded they were completely deaf or possibly mentally impaired.
After collaborating with therapists and language specialists, both boys were diagnosed with significant language acquisition issues. Words had lost their meaning as the boys transitioned from home to home and language to language. At three and four years old, their language deficit caused them incredible frustration, as they struggled to express their needs and emotions, but often could not find the right words. This resulted in emotional and behavioral outbursts, as well as physical aggression.
We started to fill our home with stories. At naptime, audiobooks played in our boys’ darkened room, giving their minds and bodies a rest from the pressures of the day. After school, their wide eyes would scour picture books, and their little ears would listen eagerly to each familiar story. At nighttime, their busy little bodies would still, as they listened to a bedtime story read aloud. They loved hearing my husband’s homespun tales of adventure, danger, and courage, where he named them the heroes of each escapade.
The more stories we read and shared, the more words AJ and Manny added to their vocabularies. The more heroes they encountered, the more courageous they became in expressing their thoughts. The more they discovered how things worked through books, the more adventurous they became as they explored their world.
Our little men, who required three social workers to wrangle into their car seats after birth family visits, who had Individual Education Plans as early as preschool, and who failed their auditory screenings, listened, engaged, and were transported by the magic of stories. They began to imagine how life could hold both sorrow and joy, grief and hope, loss and love.
We have the power and privilege to introduce our children from hard places to the magic and beauty of words. “… I believe that words, too, are necessities- and to give the children of the world the words they need is, in a real sense, to give them life and growth and refreshment…” Katherine Paterson, children’s author, Gates of Excellence.
Our kids from hard places carry deep wounds, strong connections with their first families, and wildly complex stories. What if, instead of disregarding and fearing their histories, we embraced their stories and helped them shape, learn, and heal from their past by immersing them in the power of story?
Stories Help Us Transition
Six-year-old Reina transitioned into our home after a year in foster care. Before meeting our big family of foster and adopted kids, she thought that she was the only child EVER to be separated from her family and placed in foster care. She believed the stories kids at school told about her- that she was unloved, unwanted, and defective.
Reading stories together helped us ease Reina’s transition into our family and prepared her for the transition back home to her birth family. We read stories in her heart language and in English- stories that made her laugh, stories with characters that shared her name, came from her culture of origin, or even mirrored her wild, curly hair. We read stories about kids in foster care and about kids being reunited with their first families. We reread the Bible stories she heard while attending Mass with her mom. We found copies of her favorite stories in Reina’s heart language and tucked them in her luggage so that she could take them home and share them with her mom after her transition home.
For our five adopted kids, we used adoption stories to help us transition from being a foster family to a forever family. Reading biographies of famous adoptees and stories about adopted superheroes helped our family put words to the hopes and fears of adoption. We shared books about open adoptions with their birth families to help share our hopes for strong relationships with their first families. I shared my own adoption story with them again and again. Reading and telling these stories helped start an ongoing, open dialogue about adoption, giving our kids the permission and space to ask hard questions and share their stories whenever they need to.
Stories Connect Us
One morning, while ploughing through schoolwork with our older boys, frustration set in, books were thrown, and angry words roared from their mouths. Manny stormed out of the room, and AJ curled himself into an angry ball in the corner of the couch, refusing to speak to anyone. At a loss for the right words to help my sons, I pulled out a well-loved adventure book about two brothers struggling together through the snow to find their lost father.
After years in foster care, AJ was afraid of physical touch and winced if someone even brushed against his skin. As the story unfolded, so did my AJ. His body began to relax. His eyes lost their shadow and regained their twinkle. He began to inch closer and snuggle in. The stress and confusion caused by a life lived in the limbo of foster care eased as he lost himself in a story. During story time, he began to respond to gentle fingers combing through his hair or a tender arm encircling his shoulder.
Manny’s first reaction to conflict was distance. When he felt angry or threatened, he put as much distance as he could between himself and the fight. Story is a way we invited him back into the family circle and reestablished our connection. On this harried morning, Manny inched his way back into the room, anger spent, ready to connect over a story we all loved.
This type of connection can span generations. Their grandma Joy, who lives over a thousand miles away, hosts a Book Club with our kids over Zoom. As they sip yummy drinks, they share their favorite books and stories with Grandma, rejoice over the hero’s journey, commiserate over the hero’s downfalls, and build lasting connections with her and with each other. The Book Club has grown to include cousins from two different states and helps the kids nurture a love for stories in an environment where they are immersed in rich words, stimulating discussions, and strong relationships.
On a recent visit to Grandma Joy’s house, she invited each of our kids into her library for treats and a one-on-one book club date, with a unique book selected for each of them to read with her. For our kids who are separated from the proximity and legacy of their first families, connections like this are essential. For Manny and AJ, their connection with Grandma Joy through books sparked conversations and a deeper bond with their maternal grandmother, who is also a lover of stories.
I continue to read aloud to my fifteen and sixteen-year-olds daily. The backtalking, overconfident, rebellious attitudes disappear as we, together through books, enter the world of inventors, explorers, misfits, and heroes. Through story, they develop empathy and understanding. They are gaining perspective on history and culture. In times of grief, they find solace in the shared struggle and loss of heroes on the written page.
Stories Help Us Heal
Grief and sorrow are a heavy part of our children’s stories. After ten years of slow and sometimes heartbreaking reconciliation, the birth mom of our two oldest sons died from heart failure after years of addiction. This tremendous loss shattered Manny and threatened to bury him in grief. He began to believe it would be better not to feel anything at all. To never love. To never lose someone he loved.
We struggled to find the words and strategies to reach Manny in his despair. We sought out wise counsel and researched grief counselors. We fervently prayed. But what pierced through the sorrow, straight to his heart, was a story. A dystopian futuristic book about what the world would be like without emotion, loss, or freedom; a world without history or story or color, and the deep brokenness that resulted. The book gave us a framework to discuss his pain—a ladder to begin climbing towards healing, towards his family, towards his faith, and towards the comfort he found reading the Bible.
Helping Our Children Write Their Stories
One of our family’s favorite pastimes is to pore over photo albums or watch family videos. We start building albums for each child as soon as they enter our home. We compile memories of their time with us and include photos of birth-family visits and celebrations. We gather baby pictures, letters from their first family, hand-drawn pictures, birthday cards, and build memory albums together. We have a digital photo frame on our mantle that we regularly upload images to. We share stories that we gather from grandparents, birth parents, and extended family members.
Remembering and reflecting on their stories helps our kids gain perspective, cultivate gratitude, and hold onto hope. There is power and healing in honoring our kids’ stories, and we are witnessing the redemption of their stories of pain, loss, sorrow, and hurt as we do so.
On those days when your child seems unreachable and lost, be encouraged. When your own words seem ineffective and unheard, don’t give up. Establish connections with your kids through the beauty of a story. Read-aloud. Share a favorite picture book. Visit a library. Listen to an audiobook. Share a funny family story. Write your child a love note. Record a story from their life in a journal. Be bold and give your children the gift of story.
Recommended Reading:
The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids, by Sarah Mackenzie
Give Your Child the World: Raising Globally Minded Kids One Book at a Time, by Jamie C. Martin
Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls, by Matali Perkins
Best Booklists for Kids of All Ages: Read-Aloud Revival Booklists https://readaloudrevival.com/recommends/