How Do I Talk To My Kids About Prison After I Come Home?

Say the cost and the lesson in the same breath. Tell them you are not glad you went and you do not want it for them. Then tell them what you learned and what it cost to learn it that way. Children keep the funny stories and lose the price. You have to name the price yourself.

What my son asked me

I always wanted to be a father, and I never imagined that as a father my young son would say to me, dad, are you happy you went to prison?

I said, why would you ask that?

He said, well, it seems like it was kind of fun.

I told him I'm not happy that I went to prison. I don't want you to go to prison. I speak about it favorably because I learned so many valuable lessons.

He was not being flip. He was reporting back what he had heard from his father for years. He heard that this thing was interesting, that it produced stories, that it seems to have worked out. He was right about all of it. He missed everything underneath it, and he missed it because I never put it there.

Why does a child hear prison as fun?

Think about which prison stories make it to a dinner table.

The ones that travel. The odd characters. The improvised food. The softball games. Grown men negotiating over a microwave. Those stories are true, they are easy to tell, and they get a laugh, so I told them again.

The ones that do not travel are the first night, the phone call I could not make, the birthdays I missed, and the faces of the people whose money I took. Nobody tells those twice at a kitchen table with a young child in the room.

So my son built his picture out of whatever survived the retelling. Over a few years he assembled federal prison as a strange adventure his dad went on. Then he asked me a question that told me exactly what I had built.

He also grew up around the version of me that came out of it. He never met the man who waited three and a half years hoping his case would go away. He has only known a father with a business, a routine, and a set of stories. From where he stands, prison looks like the thing that came before the good part. That is a reasonable conclusion for a child to draw and a dangerous one to leave alone.

What the delay in Denver taught me

I had a great trip in Billings, Montana. I'm flying home, and there's terrible weather in Denver, so I'm delayed two hours. Then I learn it's going to be delayed another two hours.

Four hours in an airport is a normal thing to complain about. The terminal was full of people doing it. I sat alone and listened to a Jim Rohn audiobook, and I was grateful, because I'm not standing for count and I'm not doing a fire drill at 2 a.m.

You find perspective when you go to prison. You don't complain. Instead, I find the positive.

Rohn taught that the same wind blows on everybody, and what decides where you land is the set of the sail. Nobody in that terminal picked the weather over Denver. Every one of us got the identical four hours. The men who complained loudest were not being punished more than I was.

I did not get that as a reward for suffering. Suffering does not hand it to anyone. I met men at Taft who served years and went home angrier and less capable than the day they walked in. What worked was writing, starting with a handwritten blog on October 12, 2008, with Michael Santos showing me how. Prison was the setting. It was not the teacher.

I do not want my son walking around thinking prison fixed his dad. Prison did not fix anybody. I watched men leave Taft worse than they came in.

What does perspective look like on an ordinary day?

The two things I mentioned to my son need explaining for a reader who has never been inside.

Federal facilities run official counts several times a day. At the stand-up count you are on your feet in your assigned spot while staff walk the unit and account for every person. Nothing moves until the count clears. If it does not clear, they run it again, and you stand there again, and the length of your evening belongs to somebody else. Emergency drills run on their own schedule, including the middle of the night. Nobody asks whether 2 a.m. works for you.

Those two facts are small next to everything else about a sentence. That is why they work as the example. Once you have lived years on a schedule you do not set, a gate agent cannot take your afternoon. Neither can traffic, a canceled meeting, or a slow line.

For a man just home, this is not a mood you wait to feel. It shows up in what you do with a bad hour. You sit down with a book, or you spend four hours narrating your own inconvenience to strangers. Both are habits. You build one of them.

How do I say it without glorifying it?

Three rules. I follow them with my own children.

Name the cost in the same breath as the lesson, so the two never come apart. If I tell my son what I learned about discipline, the sentence does not stop there. It ends with what it cost, and with the fact that men learn discipline without a conviction and pay nothing for it.

Tell them who was hurt, not only what you felt. A story about how hard prison was on you casts you as the one it happened to. Children spot that arrangement even when they cannot name it. Somewhere in what you tell them there has to be a person who lost money because of a choice you made, described as a person and not a category.

Never let the story end at the funny part. The softball game is fine. The softball game plus the reason you were on that field is better, and it takes one more sentence.

When I share those details, it's not to glorify it. I'm certainly not glad I went. It's to talk about the perspective that I found.

What if my kids are angry instead of curious?

Not every child asks whether it was fun. The older ones, especially the ones who were teenagers while it happened, arrive somewhere else. They watched the house get quiet. They answered questions at school they were not ready for. Their version of the story is not a set of amusing anecdotes.

Do not answer anger with your lessons. A child who is angry is not asking what you learned, and the perspective speech will land as another performance. Start with what your conduct did to his life. Name the year. Name what he missed. Then stop talking and let him answer, however long that takes, and do not steer him toward forgiveness on your schedule.

The lessons come later. They land better once he believes you understand the bill he paid for a decision he had no part in.

My son asked me a question I did not expect. The answer I gave him is the one I would give any man reading this who is going home to children who have been waiting.

If you go through this experience, I hope you too find that perspective.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I tell my kids I'm going to prison?

Tell them yourself, before anyone else does, in language matched to their age. Say what you did, say how long you will be gone, say who will take care of them, and say when you will call. Children handle a hard fact better than a secret they can feel in the house but cannot name.

How do I talk to my children about their other parent going to prison?

Do not carry his explanation for him and do not build a cover story you will have to defend for years. Say what happened in plain words, keep their routine intact, and let them love him without requiring them to defend him. Their relationship with him is not yours to negotiate.

How do I stay connected to my children while incarcerated?

Write on a fixed schedule so your mail becomes something they expect. Call when you say you will call. Ask about their world instead of reporting on yours. Consistency over years is what a child remembers, and it is the only thing you control from inside.

Should I let my kids visit me in prison?

Seeing a parent beats imagining one, and visiting rooms at camps are calmer than people expect. Prepare them for the search, the dress code, and the fact that you cannot leave with them. That last part lands hardest, so say it before the drive, not in the parking lot.

Will my kids get bullied because of my case?

Some hear about it, especially where local press covered the case. Decide in advance the one sentence your child is allowed to say and practice it until it is automatic. A child with a prepared answer holds his ground. A child who was told nothing gets ambushed in a hallway.

How much should my kids know about what I did?

Enough that they never learn a material fact from a search engine. Match the detail to the age, keep the conduct in it, and go back to the conversation as they get older. A story that satisfies a seven year old will not satisfy that same person at 16, and he will notice the gap.

How do I rebuild trust with my family after prison?

By doing what you said you would do, on the day you said it, in front of them, for a long time. Trust does not come back through a conversation about trust. It comes back through 30 unremarkable kept promises in a row, and there is no faster version of it.

Ready to build your own record?

Hi, I'm Justin Paperny.

My life changed when, with help from Michael Santos, I started creating assets that did not exist before: blogs, book reports, narratives, release plans, and books, Lessons From Prison, Ethics in Motion, Prepare, and After The Fall.

That work changed my life. I believe the same process can help you too.

That is why I produce daily content teaching you how to do it.

But reading my blogs and watching my videos is not enough. You have to create.

If you need a guide, as I did, schedule a call or call us at 949-799-3277. If you can engineer the right message on your own using our tools, great.

The key is taking daily, incremental action.