Once Upon A Time...

"Story" has been on my mind lately.  What are the ingredients for a good story?  How do we want our personal stories to evolve over time?  What stories do our children see being enacted in our homes everyday?  What stories are being fed to our families that are unnecessary and possibly detrimental to their soft little spongy brains?

Pragmatically speaking, story has been a huge piece of my day at work.  I create and tell a story to our class of 8 three year old's.  It is always seasonally appropriate, usually somewhat fable-like (has a moral), and often involves finger movements and inflection.  The kids. They love the inflection.  My goal in the moment of "so-help-me-i-HAVE-to-keep-their-attention-or-else" is usually just to simply entertain them.

Of course.

Isn't that what we do as parents afterall?  It sure feels like it at times, as I race around all week from

park to

bakery to

playdate to

birthday party to

grandma's house to

ballet class to

home.

The racing- the entertaining, seems to eclipse my initial goal.  Whatever that goal was.  (Even as I type this, I realize that I know the Sunday School answer for what our goal as parents is supposed to be, but I don't always feel it.)

That's when I think story helps.  It takes us out of the potholes of life, and pulls us into the places we're unable to really go.  While it has restorative properties for adults (escapism), it can actually lead a child down a road that may avoid the need for restoration later.  Or at least we hope as parents.

Story introduces good and bad at a very young age, the slightly more complex injustices of the world as they get a little older, and most importantly sympathy and tenderness for others.  It gives children confidence, while it can also be a reminder of our fragility.  Story can be a test of patience (for those with attention issues), and can be the one place that we as parents can disguise our guidance.  It's a tool, but in the most innocent and inconspicuous way.

One of my favorite aspects of Waldorf education is the spoken story.  For children who are not reading yet, teachers abstain from reading books which encourages children to rely on their imagination for the visual component.  (And it avoids all that "I can't see the picture, Ms. Dera!" stuff.)  What's more, the children hold on to your every word throughout the story (which is told once a day everyday for several weeks, I'll add), growing more and more attached to the nuances of the characters and their journeys.  And depending on how elaborate and dense the story is, we've seen our kids take the premise and use it in their social playtime as well.  It's kind of magical.

The particular story I'm telling right now is all about a little bearded man who secretly lives in a haystack in the back of a farm's barn.  He watches over the animals and the people of the cold town every night, after everyone has gone to sleep.  He speaks an unknown language that only the animals understand.  He peeks his head into the carpenter's workshop after he's closed up to see what toys he's made, then the bakery to see what yummy things were baked that day, and then to the cobbler to admire his handiwork.  As he peeks into each shoppe, I love embellishing all of the sights, sounds, and smells for them, as I watch their eyes stare at my mouth and study the repetition of each adjective.  (It has taken me months to untrain myself to see homoerotic innuendo in most of these "the gnome took his friend back to his haystack" stories.  Yes, there are more than one.)

It's then, as I watch their faces, that I see... I'm not entertaining them at all.  Storytelling (depending on the quality of story, of course) is a means of nurturing wonder in children.  It's a lost art in our day of spoon-fed media.  It's a breath of fresh air, as much for the child as it is to our Dora theme song fatigued ears.

I'm not trying to sound as if I'm teaching anyone anything (because ya'll- most days I'm so exhausted after my 4 hour preschool job, that I turn on SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS [of all things!] for my OWN children so as to decompress before the 2nd half of my day begins).  I'm just so happy that I had the onceinabluemoon awakening that led me to thank God for this opportunity- contributing to my children's sense of wonder, I had share.

With each season's passing, there are more and more opportunities for us as parents to make this life a little more magical than it really is.  While they are young, and wide-eyed.

Besides, there's plenty of time before they need to understand how to hide behind cynicism and scathing jokes to protect their tiny fragile hopelessly romantic emotions.

Ahem.

Or so I've heard.