You’ve got television beat hands down. A study done in the '80s showed
that storytelling had a much greater impact on the minds of children than
television did. They remembered much more from the stories.
Young kids are eager to hear real-life tales from their elders.
|
David Sidwell at the Utah State University Oral History Program explains, “Storytelling demands that the audience share with the teller in creating the pictures, actions and emotions of the story.”
Young kids are eager to hear real-life tales from their elders. Writer Eudora Welty remembers this from her own childhood. She writes in her autobiography:
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
Here’s how to develop your experiences into stories to tell your kids:
Keep a story journal. Put down little summaries of stories from
when you were a kid. As funny or interesting things happen to you now,
take
a few minutes to jot them down or enter them into a digital file. They’ll
be fresh in your memory when the opportunity to tell a story comes up.
Add in stories from other generations. Most people love to tell
their stories; they just need a little prompting. Stumped for questions?
Start
with old photos. Want a story from all angles? Get relatives together
and kick around memories of the same event. For those who are serious
about
gathering family stories, the Center
for Life Stories Preservation has
many helpful tips.
Don’t always connect stories to a moral. We all know how
useful
it is to underline a point we’re making to our kids with a similar story from our own life: “When I was your age.…” But don’t
miss the sheer pleasure of cuddling up close to a child and just sharing
an interesting memory.
Make your own picture book of a family story. Buy a small photo
album and put pictures in from a recent family trip, or use photos to illustrate
a story you’ve
told your young child. Preschool kids love stories to be told and retold.
While you retell the story, they can follow along with the pictures.
— Bruce Van Patter
