Storytelling is the art of telling an original story in a way that deeply engages the imagination of the listener. To do this, it’s essential to create a compelling storytelling world — a make-believe kingdom your young listener truly wants to enter. Creating a wonderful story isn’t only about the adventures of princesses, pirates, and talking animals. How you use your voice to create excitement, intimacy, suspense, and humor are also essential to memorable storytelling.
Just a few decades ago, storytelling was a routine and valued ritual in many families. After supper, Dad, Mom, or perhaps Grandpa, Aunt Linda, or Cousin Betsy would gather the children, dim the lights, and tell an exciting, fantastical, or sometimes scary tale. Storytelling in many families involved tales with numerous installments, “told” over months or even years. It was not unusual for particularly beloved characters and stories to become so firmly rooted in a family’s storytelling tradition that they were revived, retouched, and retold from one generation to the next. In this way, the Welcome Robin, Princess Nini, Boris the Bear, Cookie Tutu, or Okum the Man of Rubber could live on and on and on to create a family’s storytelling tradition.
Storytelling helps remove
the barriers between generations
and allows you to enter your
childrens' world.
Besides allowing families a fun way to spend time together, storytelling is a creative way to teach children a family’s history, cultural wisdom, spiritual or ethical values, and even (if you don’t overdo it), practical rules to live by. Among many good examples are the mythological tales of the ancient Greeks or Native Americans. But in today’s electronic-addicted world, for many families, storytelling has taken on the new and even more crucial role of protecting or, if necessary, restoring the centrality of the family unit. Unlike video games, iPods, cell phones, computers, or a dozen other electronic gizmos which often subtract from family unity and togetherness, storytelling increases communication at the same time that it creates shared imaginary experiences. If you doubt this, think back to when you were age nine — can you best remember a TV show you saw or a story a parent or grandparent told you?
Another increasingly important function of storytelling is to help young ones develop their imaginations and creativity. Unlike TV and other passive media, storytelling helps children develop listening skills, vocabulary, the ability to speak confidently and, most importantly, their own creative imaginations. Even reading a book out loud — as wonderful as it is — does not encourage kids to simultaneously create, imagine, and communicate in a way storytelling does.
And as every teacher and librarian knows, storytelling is also a great way to educate kids. In this context, storytelling with an historical theme, whether involving a family, another group, or a nation, works particularly well. For example, if you create an exciting story about the American Revolution featuring two kids who just happen to be a lot like your kids, chances are you’ll be able to use your storytelling opportunity to teach a good bit of history.
But let’s get back to the fun of storytelling. By sharing imaginative moments with children, adults have the unique opportunity to step into a less complicated world, where a two-week school vacation seems like a long time and summer is sure to be forever. No question, storytelling helps remove the barriers between the generations and allows you to enter your childrens' world.
Family storytelling is fun, free, wholesome, and exciting.
What Are You Waiting For?
For ideas on getting started, see How to Create Your Own Family Storytelling
Tradition. |
