I’m teaching my daughter to tell stories. At 3 and a half years old, what this mostly involves is my husband and I telling and reading her stories and, of course, asking her lots of questions. On occasion, when I ask, she actually agrees to tell me a story too.
To be clear, I am not pushing my daughter to tell fully formed stories at 3 and a half. I’ll wait until she’s four before giving her critical reviews of structure and dramatic arc. But getting kids into the habit of telling stories is a great way to teach them to understand the world. Furthermore, storytelling helps them to create long term memories. When they frame their day, or an event, in their own words, it tends to stick with them longer. In fact, there has been some research done suggesting that women have more memories from childhood than men specifically because people talk to girls more than boys, asking the girls more questions and expecting them to flesh out their answers. Hopefully, my husband and I can even things out by asking our son a lot of questions too – once he learns to talk!
Lately, my daughter has been into stories about babies. This might have to do with the arrival of her baby brother. She asks us to tell her about when she was born, when mommy was born, when daddy was born. She is starting to piece together the story of her birth, and the timeline of our family, but she’s not quite there yet. For example, she often asks my husband to tell her what I was like as a baby, and vice versa. This morning, when I asked her to tell me a story, here’s what she said.
“Once upon a time.” (Classic storytelling start. Way to go little girl!) “Daddy had a baby and her name was mommy.” (Okay, okay. If we take that figuratively, it could work.) “One night, daddy’s belly started to shake. Daddy went to the doctor and then mommy jumped out of his belly!” (So, I guess she meant the baby part literally. My daughter jumped feet first from my belly when she was born. She must’ve liked that image.) “And then mommy was a little baby named Jessica and she was so happy and daddy was so happy to have her.” (I couldn’t have said it better myself.)
Not only do I love to hear her telling a story, practicing forming sentences and thoughts and ideas, but I also learn so much from hearing how she interprets what I’ve told her. She might not have gotten the sequence exactly down, but she knows that when the little baby was born, daddy, and mommy too, was so happy to have her. That’s a story I will always cherish, and I know she will as well.
Storytelling gives us a way to access the world, the things we understand and the things we are trying to understand. Giving kids the tools to try to form their own stories is like giving them a way to make sense of the world. It is never too early to share stories with children, and to encourage them to share their stories.
——
If you’d like to hear some storytelling for adults, come to our monthly themed storytelling shows, usually the last Saturday of the month. The February 25th show is called “He Said, She Said: stories with a point of view, or two.” Details and tickets here.
Read about our storytelling workshops for adults here.
And if you are looking for storytelling for kids, well, I’ll leave that part up to you!
——-
Jessica Robinson is the Founder of Better Said Than Done and the author of Caged, an urban fantasy novel set in Northern Virginia. She’s the mother of two very vocal children and will next be heard sharing her own true, personal story on stage in “Roar: true tales of women warriors” at Jammin’ Java in Vienna on April 30, 2017.
