Lessons through storytelling

Offlate I’ve been so taken by this whole concept of storytelling. PAL loves stories and he loves hearing the same story again and again and again. Sometimes I get so bored, but he doesn’t. There are some situational stories that I make up for him to brush his teeth and drink his milk. He started going to playschool and I had to make the morning chores of waking him up, brushing his teeth, drinking milk an easy experience for both of us without leading to any power struggles or conflicts. Hence one fine morning I just came up with a story for making him brush his teeth:

“Once Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were playing in the garden (kutty park in his language) when suddenly a worm jumped out from Mickey’s mouth and Minnie jumped on seeing the wiggly worm come out of his mouth. So she asked him if he brushes his teeth for which Mickey says, ‘it’s a boring thing to do’. So Minnie takes him to a dentist who examines his teeth and tells him there are lots of worms inside and cleans up everything. So he then gives mickey a red color toothbrush and toothpaste and tells him it is wise to brush his teeth everyday”.

So finally he brushes his teeth.. Well life’s not so easy, cos sometimes the story doesn’t work, so I’ve to think of other creative ways to make him brush his teeth. Once his friend gifted him a Lightning Macqueen car and thanks to it, as it shows its teeth all smiling. So I brush its teeth first and make him brush his own. These are characters he loves being associated with, he’s mad about Mickey and adores Lightning. And then comes drinking milk. Now when he takes the glass of milk from me he immediately asks me for the goofy story that I tell him. That story goes something like this:

“Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Daisy and Donald are playing in the park and after sometime Goofy becomes very tired. And Mickey asks him if he had anything to eat or drink before coming for play. So Goofy tells Mickey how he dislikes milk so much. So then Mickey takes him to his house and makes him a special chocolate milk like how I give for PAL. Goofy takes a liking for it and after he drinks it, becomes very strong that he’s able to play lots of games”.

Well, these stories may seem very silly, but not to my 2 year old hero. He loves them and what’s better, there’s no fighting or power struggles for getting him to eat his food or drink his milk. Off late I made up my stories out of a cartoon he watched in YouTube about a Tractor Tom, and he just loves them and wants to hear them again and again. He loves listening to stories at bedtime. I have a collection of few Disney and ladybird books from which I tell him stories and sometimes he’d want to listen to Hindu mythology stories and on a few nights it’s the old traditional fables. And the best thing about this is that he once told us a story by combining three stories together (by randomly jumping from one story to another) and made it into one .
I feel stories are just great ways of connecting with your child. Whether you want to teach him about values or candidly encourage him to do a task, they come in very handy.

SR