When Words Don't Work, Stories Can.

When Lucas was seven, I sat across from his teacher and heard words I'll never forget: “He's bright, but he struggles to read the room.”I went home and cried. Not because I didn't know — I knew. I'd watched him laugh at the wrong moments, miss the hurt in a friend's eyes, repeat the same joke three times not knowing it had already fallen flat.

I tried social scripts. I tried role-play. I tried every workbook on the shelf. He'd nod and say he understood. Then nothing would change. Because you can't lecture a child into empathy.

Then one night, I read him a story I'd written — about a boy named Eli who accidentally hurt his best friend's feelings. Lucas went quiet. Then he said: “Mommy, I do that.”That was the moment. Stories don't lecture. They show. And when a child sees themselves in a character, something shifts.