How to Tell Stories to Children

How can we help our children cope with death or illness in the family? With the grief and loss that comes in its wake?

Silke Rose West has been present for families in her school who lost children, mothers, and other family members. She has been at the side of elders as they died. Through it all, she has helped siblings, parents, her kindergarten class, and the entire school community reckon with the pain and love that resides in death.

In this episode, she explains how storytelling helped her guide those children and families to turn toward the difficult reality, yet give them hope.

Birthday stories present a unique opportunity to celebrate the life of your child. Done briefly and lovingly, they can be a blessing for both parent and child.

Using flexible examples and a simple method, Silke and Joe take you through the steps of creating this special moment for your own family.

As parents, we all encounter a child’s fear from time to time - often from a scary story or a movie. It’s a terrible feeling, right? It’s one thing to deal with your own fear, but seeing it erupt in your child can make you feel powerless.

In this episode, Joseph Sarosy draws upon the work of neuroscientists to explain how a well-placed story can ease and even transform fear. Not erase it. Not distract from it. But how a story helps us look fear right in the face, and change it.

Storytelling is a tool for connection. During covid, or at other times, we may not always be able to visit distant relatives or loved ones. Yet, we yearn for ways to connect. Zoom, telephone, and mail are one way, but anyone with a 3-year-old (or a 15-year-old) knows how this can be taxing for a child.

Alternatively, simple stories are often a great way to help our children stay connected in heart and mind to grandma or grandpa - and in ways that can be very engaging and playful. In this episode, Silke and Joe discuss how to introduce family stories - both real and imaginative - that can help keep your distant loved ones in your child's life.

Any parent, grandparent, or teacher who has told stories to their children will recognize that at the end of a good story, you don’t just walk away with a good story – the two of you feel closer. Why?

What scientists have pieced together over the last seventy years is that storytelling is a principle component of how we think, speak, and make meaning of our lives. But almost all of this research is focused on the relationship between the story and the listener. At How to Tell Stories to Children, we focus on the relationship between speaker and listener - meaning you and your child.

To fill in the gap in the science, we need to look elsewhere – at one of the principle theories of human development: attachment theory. The main principle of attachment theory is that a healthy attachment to one or more parental figures in a child’s early years helps a child form healthy relationships later in life. Since relationships are vital to social creatures like you and I, this leads to all sorts of desirable outcomes, like academic and career success, mental health, and positive self-esteem.

Storytelling should be thought of as a relationship with your child. The psychological and emotional benefits to both speaker and listener are well-researched and documented.

In this episode, Joseph Sarosy, co-author of How to Tell Stories to Children, explains: 1) the science of storytelling, 2) a simple method to help get you started, and 3) the social and global impact of diverse storytelling.

Storytelling is a gift that belongs to every human on the planet. Yet, many of us experience self-doubt when it comes to telling stories - even with our own children.

What causes a person to claim the role of storyteller with their child? Is it a natural gift? A learned skill? The answer may surprise you.