There aren’t many people who will proudly stand-up and declare themselves to be great storytellers.
Something about the art makes people jumpy. It’s as if they fear they’ll be put of the spot to craft a brilliant story in front of their peers wearing (you guessed it) nothing but their underwear. Their defense mechanism usually kicks in with remarks like, “oh, I’m a terrible storyteller,” “my husband’s the storyteller in the family,” “I suck at stories.”
The truth is I blame our grade school teachers with their empirical notions of how they think a story should be told. The “what I did over my summer vacation” story every child recites unnervingly in front of the class has quashed many the budding storyteller. Grammar, syntax, climax, denouement – so many things to think about there’s no wonder many of us consider public speaking scarier than jumping out of a plane. But forget about all that hooey (as my mother would say) and just talk the story out.
Put one word in front of the other and don’t worry whether you sound ridiculous or make much sense at all. Luckily, your audience isn’t aware of the “rules” of storytelling and won’t stop you mid-sentence to correct your misuse of allegory. All that most children want is to be with you; to them you are their hero with or without the story. But if you happen to turn to them and one day and say the first thing that comes out of your head, “A monster went up to a tree and went wheeeee” you open up worlds of imagination and fun to them, not to mention a sea of questions: What monster? Which tree? Why did he go wheeee?
Telling stories (even not-so-great ones) to your children builds their self-confidence even if it feels like it shatters your own. Showing children you’re not the perfect storyteller gives them the freedom to try it themselves. Without any hard fast rules in telling stories all that’s left is a genuine desire to tell one, and what better place to tell stories then from the heart. The reality is over time the stories you tell get better and better and both you and your child will be amazed at the quality and creativity of what you create.
So be prepared to be a (possibly) terrible storyteller. Even when you fumble your words, have no idea how to finish off your thoughts and end up muttering silently to yourself while your three year-old looks at you in wonder, know she is thinking eagerly to herself… and then what happened?
And when it comes time for your child to recite the story of what he did over his summer vacation, his teacher will likely turn to him and say “where did you learn to create stories like that?
His answer? At home.
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