Story Warren

Kindling Imagination for Kingdom Anticipation

Frames of Reference: How Early Literacy Helps Our Children See the World

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While a friend and I watched our children playing on the playground, she confided to me, “The only thing I buy for myself is picture frames these days.”

We had a comfortable chuckle, and I thought about all the frames hugging the photos in my house: big and small; decorative silver swirls and plain wood; dusty glass and porcelain pink baby shoes. 

I hardly notice the frames unless I actually look at them. The frames are nice, but what makes me smile are the happy children’s faces smiling back at me and the memories that we’ve made together. 

The frames simply help me focus on what’s important.

Recently, my children and I were driving alongside the ocean. We saw a windsock.

My youngest son, who is six years old, pointed it out and said, “A windsock, just like in ‘Pilot Small!’”

“Pilot Small” was one of his favorite books when he was a toddler, but we haven’t read it for three years. I smiled as I drove, remembering that the last time we read that book, he couldn’t even say “windsock.”

However, the book and the image helped him to correctly identify what he was seeing three years later. It defined windsock for him, and we had a good conversation about how pilots use windsocks to see which way the wind is blowing to know how to take off into the wind.

He asked more questions. “Would ship captains need a windsock?” “Who else might use one?” “What are they made of?”

The picture book “Pilot Small” was the frame, but my son was focused on the picture inside. He built on the vocabulary, concepts, and applications in order to add more knowledge to what was already stowed away in his mind.

As Stratford Caldecott wrote in “Beauty in the Word” about a child’s formative years: “The birth of language is bound up with memory and poetry and the telling of stories about the world and about ourselves.”

Since then, I have been listening to my children to see how often they mention these frames of reference. I am amazed at how often a children’s picture book, easy reader, or chapter book had helped to shape what they are seeing in their lives now, even though some of them are in their teens. 

It isn’t only vocabulary that my children gained from their early literacy. They also absorbed morality, ethics, and definitions of virtue that are helping them navigate the tricky waters of adolescence. 

When they remember Bilbo’s arkenstone dilemma in The Hobbit, it helps them to frame what loving a friend might look like even while confronting a wrong that friend has done. Having a frame of reference helps them decide how to act in the picture of the present.

Author Sarah Clarkson writes, “Next to Scripture and the influence of my parents, great books have formed my worldview, developed my moral imagination and shaped my idea of virtue.” 

Everytime we hand our children a book, we are sculpting a piece of the frame through which they will see their world. The frames are not as immediate as the here and now, but they do provide the structure and reference that our children need in order to live as kingdom citizens in a fallen world.

Not only will their early literacy frame how they see the world now, but it will also continue to guide them into their future, equipping them for whatever tasks and events are ahead. 

So, as you shop for frames, are you looking for the true, the good, and the beautiful that will enhance the photos they hold? There are so many good resources to help us, as parents, in this quest for worthy frames: Redeemed Reader, Read Aloud Revival, and The Rabbit Room are several of my go-to’s. 

The bountiful feast of story that we feed our children in their formative years will frame their future. 

It’s a frame of reference that’s priceless.

Featured image by wirestock on Freepik
Sarah Dixon Young
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