It’s Story Time!

“Who loves stories?” All the hands went up. “Who hates stories?” Not one hand rose up; wait, in the corner, near the cupboard a boy, big for his age, slowly put up his right hand. Now I moved closer to him and asked him if he would like to say why! The boy looked me over with his little eyes and then uttered these words – “Well, I don’t hate all stories – just the ones that are told in a boring way, and maybe the ones that always try to point out my mistakes… hmm…wait…wait, also the ones in which I have no role to play” Then I said, “I can see that you really love good stories and probably have more than a few of them to share – am I right?” A reluctant grin came over the boy, and he nodded his head affirmatively. A boy sitting further away blurted out, “Narain always has a story to share Uncle!” Then another and many more raised their voices as testimony to this little big boy. If you had looked at my face then, you would have seen a big smile of joy written large across my face. All this happened at a summer camp where I was invited to equip children with skills to perform stories.

One of the needs of families is quality family time – a time where both parents and children come together to have joyful fun and build values. (And this definitely cannot be gained by all sitting before the ‘idiot box’ as a family). The world to the children of today is a big splash of color synchronized with right sounds all presented as powerful stories in television, movies, youtube etc – the result is a dilution in their attention span when it comes to listening. For parents, ungluing the children from these media magnets and teaching them to listen better, requires an interesting family time. The answer I have found is Story-time. Now when we read or tell a story, simple or complicated we are in direct competition to the great media around us. The solution is to tell stories that have the children involved right from the beginning. In other words, we need to guide our children up the ladder of storytelling – starting from story listening to story performing. I am going to reveal to you three steps on this.

This is the first step and so as we read or tell a story, it’s important that the children are allowed to interact with it. How? Get the children to choose the characters (you can have some control over this by keeping the main character(s) as your choice); choose the type of characters – animals, objects, people, fairies, monsters, superheroes, movie characters, Biblical characters etc; choose the setting – where the story unravels; choose the moral of the story (this requires some dialogue beforehand to clearly spell out the moral being presented); allow the children to interact – they can draw characters and color; sketch the setting; play music if they are learning an instrument; produce a background sound; act out a character; speak certain repetitive sayings – like saying a certain set of words after each point in the flow of the story. These are few of the many aspects and you can mix and match, also innovate to create your own style for each story telling session. This not only brings out the story in full color and sound, but makes the experience good for you too.

This is the next step and here the child / children are given the opportunity to actually contribute to the flow of the story. Everyone sits in a circle and one person who is the story- director starts the story. (He/she also has the final say on the flow, moral, message etc). Initially the child can be prompted to add story-bits by asking them questions that lead to the right answers; then the child can be given a time limit (say 30 seconds) to add to the story (you can establish boundaries beforehand, so the story does not go off in a tangent or into unchartered territory). The players can also stand up and act out the story. Story sharing happens in a circle and you can keep it fast or slow moving and as the story passes on, the sharing becomes creative. The child / next person in the circle can add sentences, songs, sounds, non-verbal actions etc. Remember as the story-director you have the privilege of wrapping up the story and giving everyone applause or maybe a star in the story-participation chart. One tip – remember to fix a time-limit and if the story is not complete – take it to the next day. Start with the summary of yesterday’s, then continue the sharing.

The third step involves you letting the child have the bigger chunk of the storytelling process. Just like us, children collect incidents from their lives and when they are given opportunities to link that with values they gain valuable experiences, which are guiding points in their journey. Now, how do we help them discover the connections without actually thrusting it into their minds? By helping the children craft it as stories and performing the same. The process begins with us, the parents not just listening actively to the flow of incidents but also capturing the same through rapid sketches, clarifying questions and understanding voices. Once we have one story captured, we need to start building it. This is called Story-crafting. The basis is this – every story should have a beginning, middle and an end – with a clear association to a value. (If you want to learn more about story-crafting, I suggest going through a good book on storytelling). This crafting is a collaborative process – the child needs to be totally involved. He needs to know why this flow is better, why this sequence makes sense when performing, the need for intonations, non-verbal gestures and actions etc. Do remember to have lots of fun when crafting – that teaches the child the beauty of working with joy and enthusiasm. Once you have a clear storyline – help the child perform it. Allow him to change words or structures, add his own style of gesture, emotion and have a blast telling the story to you and to others. Find ways to celebrate this achievement and make this a weekend activity.

Remember, stories are the fabric of our life and if children can be trained in this – they become better listeners, better communicators, collaborative and participative workers. So this New Year, carve out a family time and rediscover the joy of delighting together with your children. Happy Story-time!