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 Storytelling and Child Rearing^©

 Some of the most endearing children stories are “The Little Prince” “Alice in the Wonderland” “The Wizard of Oz” and “the Velveteen Rabbit”. Their appeal is not just for children but also to adult. You will love reading them and they are worth reading again and again for the lesson they deliver.

You can use them and other stories to inculcate values to your children; and stories have another advantage – they last. As the song goes “love song lasts longer/ than lovers often do/” The same is true with stories. They last longer than their teller. The way our brain works favors easy remembering of stories as they follows a logical sequence, which is exactly how our minds work.

Stories appeal to us young or old for they are mainly sequence of events.  It doesn’t take much remembering sequences of events. Take note I’m not saying, “Remember it verbatim” but “remember the sequence of events.”

Thus, it’s more effective to tell stories with moral lesson than to teach the values simply on our own. Isn’t it that we forget most of the lessons we learned in grade school while the stories we heard are conjured from time to time by some objects or events?

Another advantage of stories for teaching values is that it has a third person approach. The morals stories give are easier medicine to take because they are about a princess, an old woman or lazy jack. But never underestimate stories’ efficiency. They bring more profound understanding in the long run – for we continually learn from them.

Telling your children stories will also encourage them to read books. It’s the most natural jumping board to reading.  And when your children learned to love reading early in their childhood, they will not easily lose that love.

Without better option, television will come as natural filler of your children’s active and developing mind. This is objectionable; the idiot box has a bad reputation in child rearing.

Simply giving your child a book to read will not be so effective either. Even if its pages are filled with those colored pictures, they are still inanimate.

If you know how to tell stories you become an interactive book that is sensitive to them. Isn’t it, that we often reread or change a tale to fit with children’s whims and fantasy? We could be the best interactive book or television for them – and much more, we can always have a clean show; we are the editor and program director.

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Marjonnel