All Blog Posts

I was visiting my friend Sue one day when her mom phoned. I knew they needed to talk a while.

So I turned to her 8-year-old daughter Charlene and said, “I’ll tell you a story while your mom is on the phone with your grandma.”

Spending Time To Win Kids

It was such a natural way to spend the waiting time, I hardly gave it a thought.

After I told Charlene a few stories, Sue finished her phone conversation and sent her daughter outside to play while we resumed our visit.

A few months later, when I drove into Sue’s driveway for another visit, Charlene saw me. Her face lit up, and she ran over to my car.

The first words out of her mouth were “Will you tell me a story?”

Storytelling for Children: Winning a Child’s Heart

Storytelling is the natural way.  

“Storytelling draws people together,” says professional storyteller Joe Hayes.

“While the story is happening,” he explained “the storyteller and the listener are working together in a mutual creation process. The storyteller tells, the listener’s creative process works, and the story comes to life for them. They’re in the same world together. It creates a sense of sharing.”

“And for children, it’s a really secure feeling –

having  that kind of attention coming directly from an adult. There’s nothing between whatsoever—no printed page, no machines (computer screen, etc.)”

“It’s one person to another – nourishment for a child’s mind and spirit to receive directly from an adult.”

Besides that, storytelling feeds a child’s natural delight in language.

“All human beings have a real appetite for language,” Hayes said. “Children especially have it because they are acquiring language—acquiring not just vocabulary, but the styles and rhythms and everything that language can do.”

Storytelling for Children: A Special Way To Express Affection

“For children, language is becoming a way people express closeness. When an infant is upset, he gets picked up and held close. In storytelling, you are still touching, but you use words.”

“Language takes the place of comforting.”

“When an adult tells a story to school age children,” Hayes said, “their emotional experience is similar to what would happen if that adult gave them a hug. There’s a basic, secure kind of feeling, so that if you’re a stranger telling stories to kids, it breaks down the strangeness. They will feel like going over and giving you a hug afterwards because of the sense of closeness.”

Children sometimes do, in fact, come over and give Hayes a hug after he tells them stories in public, he said.

So…do you want to tell stories to children?

Here are Joe’s suggestions:

First, look for natural opportunities.

“Storytelling is a real natural thing to do when there is some kind of hiatus, when you have time to be filled, like when you’re walking along, driving in the car, or stuck in the airport waiting for a plane to arrive,” Hayes said.

“That’s why bedtime stories are so popular,” he added. “There’s a space between being awake and falling asleep, a zone in between the two, and storytelling is a natural way to fill that.”

Second, don’t be afraid of simplicity.

Hayes said. “A story doesn’t have to be that much, that elaborate. In our society where there’s so much highly produced stuff, people are afraid that if something is simple, it’s not good enough.

“Be confident that any story you make up or remember about your own experience or your child’s early experience, that makes a wonderful story,” Hayes said.

Hayes’ own love of storytelling began in childhood when his father told Hayes stories about his childhood experiences.

Adapt what you read and hear.

“Feel OK about telling anything in your own words, about adapting it and changing it,” Hayes said. “You don’t have to memorize anything. Tell as much as you remember. Take something like a song you remember and just tell the story in narrative form. Anywhere you can, grab that idea of the story. It doesn’t matter how polished the story is.”

“The important thing,” he said, “is that you tell stories you like, stories that somehow you enjoy and want to share.”

Be yourself.

“Tell stories in your own way,” Hayes said. “Part of what you do (in storytelling) is to reveal yourself. You want kids to be attached to the real you.”

So don’t worry about imitating professional storytellers. “The funny thing is, almost everybody sings songs. (Yet) the vast majority of us are not singers. We don’t sing very well, but we still sing. It’s the same with stories. Not everyone can be a (professional) storyteller, but everyone can tell stories.”

Be honest in order To Win a Child.

“Sometimes parents think they should tell certain stories to kids because they teach the right lesson,” Hayes said. “But kids love to hear about the things the parents did that were bad, about their parents getting into trouble.”

“It’s important to realize we’re incredibly flawed beings, and imperfection is part of what makes us human,” Hayes said. “To see that (imperfection) in parents and in ourselves is necessary to honestly understand the struggle of the whole thing.”

P.S. My friend Sue died two weeks ago, and I met the now-all-grown-up Charlene at the funeral. I hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl, but she remembered me immediately and fondly. Storytelling: what a wonderful way to love a little girl and win her heart!

©Becky Cerling Powers updated 2023

Reprint with attribution only www.beckypowers.com

Becky Cerling Powers blogs at www.beckypowers.com. She is the author of the nonfiction narrative, Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage and the parenting guide, Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive.