Tell Me a Story

In the October 1996 issue of Family Fun, there is an article entitled: Tell Me a Story by Laird Harrison. “With these tips from the pros a little practice, any parent can be a storyteller.”
8 Secrets of Story Telling: How to tell stories that your kids will love.

Start with what you do well and build from there. “Discovering your strength gives you confidence,” says storyteller Jay O’Callahan of Boston. “I discovered I have a good imagination. Some people really remember what happened to them when they were young. Some people are very musical. Some may have a great sense of drama.”

Use your voice. “Storytelling is very much about sounds: the sound of the wind or the sound of silence,” says O’Callahan.

If your imagination runs dry, get your child to suggest the elements in the story and weave your narrative around them. “I used to do whole stories where I never told anything,” says Boston storytelling coach Doug Lipman. “I asked, ‘What should the story be about? A monster? What kind of Monster? Who else is in the story?’ It’s possible, when all else fails, to get the child to tell the story.”

Use your body. “The slightest little lowering of the chest conveys so much more about disappointment than anything you could say,” comments San Francisco actress and storyteller Brenda Wong Aoki.

“Ham it up,” says Syd Lieberman of Chicago, “especially with little kids. Everybody has a witchy voice. You can get up and playact. If you want to use props, do that.”

Don’t stop when your kid hits adolescence - you can still touch teenagers. “If you open yourself up and show some kind of real joy or sorrow, you can reach them,” says Oakland storyteller Diane Ferlatte. : They also like a good ghost story.”

For a change of pace, make storytelling into a game, suggests Seattle author and folklorist Margaret, Read MacDonald. One person starts the tale, taking it up to a key point in the story - right when the here discovers, say, that the masked man is actually...The next person continues, and so on.

Don’t be a perfectionist. “Really the most important thing for the child is just the closeness,” says Doup Lipman. “The gift is yourself.”