Literal vs Imaginative Interpretation

My son Leo and daughter Lilly are polar opposites on so many different levels. Lilly loves hot dogs and won't touch Mac and Cheese, Leo loves Mac and Cheese but will only eat a hotdog bun. Lilly has an imagination that spans the entire universe and when we ask her about her day it's hard to tell the difference between stories and reality. Leo had a batman shirt on and one of his teaches said "Oh you're batman today", and Leo says "No, I'm Leo."

Lilly is a little older and can follow analogies and metaphors already, Leo gets very upset when he senses reality being warped in the slightest. I believe there's a natural tendency to interpret either literally or imaginatively, and I'm lucky enough to see both with my children. Now I'm naturally an imaginative what could be dreamer, a through and through Pisces. However my wife is extremely literal, she's a reality based Capricorn that keeps me pretty grounded. However we both connect with each of our kids really well when we know their perspectives and get aligned ahead of time.

So what does this have with stories? Well for fantasy and science fiction subjects just the presence of the fantastic elements is enough to get Lilly interested, but Leo wants to see what they're going to do. That leads back to story quality, I believe that the fantasy and sci-if subjects are just icing on the cake for a good story and Leo wants to cut to the heart of the story. Lilly runs around the house with a spaceship because it's a spaceship, Leo runs around with cars because they roll down ramps better.

That's why my mission has always been to find and create stories that have a heart or a purpose behind them to appeal to both the literal and imaginative little ones. Leo loves a good story with a moral. Sometimes Lilly needs something interesting enough to keep her attention to make it to the end of the story to hear the moral.

Thanks for reading and keep dreaming big...

- Patrick

#opinion