[Guest: J.J. Johnson] The Imagination of a Child

I love the imagination of a child. Listening to kids play with their action figures and toys and making up stories as they do is such an enjoyment. It always takes me back to my time as child when I did the same thing. However, I never expected one of the biggest lessons I would learn in storytelling would be while watching my kids play and do this very thing.

In July of 2018 I had a desire to write a middle-grade novel. A story that would be about the size of the I Survive or a Goosebumps books. So I did what every writer does when trying to force a story into existence. I grabbed a yellow legal tab and started jotting down ideas. After about forty-five frustrating minutes and a collection of wadded up yellow sheets gathering at my feet, I took a break.

My two boys (Who I refer to as Hobbit one & Hobbit two) were in the living room. They were three and five at the time, and I walked into a disaster. You see, one thing I need to explain about my kids is that, like most boys, they are obsessed with dinosaurs. We have hundreds. I wouldn’t be surprised if the count equaled a thousand plastic dinosaurs. We have the miniatures, the medium-size ones, the large ones, and even a big two-foot-tall T-Rex that I’ve managed to trip over in the middle of the night. Point is, they were everywhere!

My kids were playing a game where they were giants, and they had to stop the dinosaurs from wrecking the living room. I looked at my oldest and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if your dinosaurs came to life and escaped the house, and we had to find a way to stop them?” All at once, their imaginations took over along with mine. We pretended the dinos had escaped and were running down the street. I think one of the boys even said Plastic Dinos of Doom!

 Later, I sat back down, and I wrote a sentence on my yellow legal tab.

When hundreds of plastic toy dinosaurs come to life, a twelve-year-old boy and his friends must stop them before they wreck the neighborhood for good.

Just like that, I had the foundation for my new middle-grade series. Book one, Iggy & Oz: The Plastic Dinos of Doom launched in September 2019 way above my expectations.

And it all started because I took the time to be dad.

I love this quote by Charles Spurgeon:

“Let no Christian parents fall into the delusion that Sunday School is intended to ease them of their personal duties. The first and most natural condition of things is for Christian parents to train up their own children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

One of the most important things we can do for our children is to give them our time and to enjoy being with them. Kids aren’t dumb—they sense when you feel like they’re a bother. They also sense when we genuinely like them and enjoy their company. I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way. But I’ve also come to realize that if I ever expect to be obedient to Proverbs 22:6, then my time with my children is precious to them.

Kids have wild imaginations: Monsters under their beds, ghosts, the boogeyman, and everything in between. Sometimes, it takes suspending disbelief and creating time to make an adventure with your kids in order to eliminate the stress of the day and find the story you need to tell.

I wanted to write a story for my children. Instead, I created one with them, along with a memory.