How to See Your Child’s Imagination as a Gift—Not an Annoyance

Designed to Create

I think it’s a universal truth that the lively sparks of the imagination that kids foster butt up against the iron-cold realities of a grown-up world and more often than not, get them in trouble. I experienced this myself in my own life. I can recall my parents sitting me down in late elementary school for a very stern conversation about the facts of life. And as they went on and on, leaning forward in earnest, my mind wandered at the wrong moment. And so when they asked me, “Okay, Katie, tell us what you think. We really want to know,” they were not enthused when I responded that I was wondering what it would be like to be a giant purple playground ball, bouncing from rooftop to rooftop down the street.

I think this experience goes beyond my own. I have been on mission trips where kids in Kenya have been batting a balloon back and forth between medical missionaries and then crouch away when the principal reprimands them. I’ve seen a preschooler, whose long brown curls fell out from chemotherapy long ago, take hold of her IV pole and use it as a scooter, sliding down the hospital corridor until a nurse stopped her with a sharp retort.

The truth is that too often when kids have these bursts of inspiration, imagery, and story that just seem to bubble out of them, we try to squelch it because it’s just not convenient, not appropriate, or not the right time. I think when we do this, though, we are stamping out what is really a gift from the Lord. And I would encourage kids to understand that when you have these moments where an image or an idea takes hold of you, you are reflecting who God made you to be. He’s a creator, and because we’re made in his image, he has designed us to create.

Steward the Imagination

Those bursts and images and stories that seem to come out of nowhere have kingdom significance when stewarded well. Don’t take my word for it. Consider those who’ve come before us who have written beautiful examples of literature—all of them informed by the gospel—that began as daydreams.

C. S. Lewis didn’t sit down with pen in hand and decide to create this world of Narnia and a very meticulously detailed apologetic to bring kids to the gospel. The Chronicles of Narnia began because he saw a fawn holding an umbrella, and the image stayed with him for years until he finally started to ask questions about the fawn. And in the setting of those questions, the great lion, Aslan, burst onto the scene, and Narnia was born.

It was the same for Tolkien, who first learned about Middle-earth not from being meticulous and constructing a world (although he did that eventually with his background in linguistics), but it initially began he was grading papers, got bored, and then the first line of The Hobbit bounced into his head out of nowhere: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” And he asked himself, What is a hobbit? And he started to ask questions and treat this kind of revelation as significant.

In my own much more humble example, the Dream Keeper Saga began because I was driving to work in the hospital, and suddenly an image of a girl walking into the kitchen and encountering a dragon popped into my head. And instead of dismissing it—as I normally would do because I had very serious work to do—I let it linger. And I said, Okay, maybe the Lord is giving me something here.

So my encouragement for kids would be that, yes, while we need to listen to grownups about when we need to attend to business and to our work and be respectful, don’t discount the value of your daydreams. Even if you have a flash of inspiration and you have to put it aside, come back to it, ask questions about it. You may just find that that seed of inspiration and delight gives life and bloom to a full story that helps to remind you and show others of the greatest storyteller of all.

Kathryn Butler is the author of The Dream Keeper Saga.

Related Articles

10 Things You Should Know about the Imagination

Matthew P. Ristuccia, Gene Edward Veith Jr.

May 30, 2016

We use our imaginations all the time, whether we are daydreaming, planning, remembering, or meditating.

4 Ways to Squash a Child’s Imagination

Kathryn Butler

February 17, 2025

Sometimes our determination to instruct extinguishes the wonder sparking in our kids’ minds. When do our efforts to discipline actually squash a child’s imagination, and what is the cost?

Imagine Reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’ the Way You Read the Bible

Greg Gilbert

August 13, 2022

Imagine reading The Lord of the Rings out of order. You pick it up, flip over to Rivendell for a moment, then hop over to Mordor before slamming back into the Shire.

Podcast: Unicorns, Allegory, and Stories That Give Us Hope (Kathryn Butler)

February 17, 2025

Kathryn Butler talks about writing Christian fiction and how she has crafted books that weave together biblical themes and compelling storytelling.