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| |    Tell Me a Story: Why Tales and Myths Are So Important by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. reviewed by Laura Jana, M.D., F.A.A.P. Storytelling is fun, but it's also important. Stories are a basic way that people of all ages make sense of their experiences. The practice of making up stories to explain things goes back to the beginnings of human history (think of the creation myths from ancient cultures). It also goes back to the beginnings of each individual human. Infants who don't yet have words nonetheless learn to expect events to happen according to certain sequences that resemble simple stories. For example: I'm hungry. I cry. Mommy comes. I get milk. Preschool children use stories to explain everything they see around them. "Why does it rain?" you ask a typical three-year-old. Her explanation comes in the form of a story: "First, the plants are growing, but then they get thirsty and the ground is too dry. So it rains because the plants need to drink." Children's pretend play often involves making up stories, even when they don't realize it. When preschoolers play house, for example, they spend a lot of time assigning parts and discussing the plot of the story they're dramatizing: What is the baby going to do, and how should the daddy respond? Stories and reality Young children have no trouble getting into stories because the boundary between fantasy and reality is not as solid as it is in adults. The main reason for this is that their experience of the world is so limited and there are so many things that adults accept as real that to them seem very mysterious (thunderstorms, for example, or politics). When we adults read or listen to a story, we keep reminding ourselves that it's only a story. Children don't do that; instead, the characters are much more real to them. That is one reason why exposure to video violence (a very compelling multimedia form of storytelling) is so harmful to them, and why parents should gently help their young children sort out reality from make-believe. "You know, this story is made up," you might say. "Of course, I know," the child might reply, but her look tells you that she is a little relieved to hear it from you, just to be sure! Learning from stories At the heart of each story is a problem that has to be solved. For a young child, the world is full of unsolved problems: how to get positive attention, how to get to do what you want to do (instead of what someone tells you to do!), how to figure out what the grown-ups are going to do next. Any story in which a person confronts a problem and solves it is immediately relevant to a young child's life, because it teaches her to view problems optimistically, as things that can be solved. Beyond that general orientation, of course, children pick up a great deal of specific information from stories: how (if you're ever trapped by a wicked witch) you can use cleverness to escape, how (if you ever plan to build a house) it pays to take a little longer and use high-quality materials (that no nasty old wolf can huff and puff down). There's also a long tradition of parents using stories specifically to teach children lessons. Religious stories, in particular, are intended to instruct. But if they don't enthrall first, the instruction is likely to merely drift away. A lot of stories that are not explicitly religious also convey moral values. Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who is a particular favorite of mine, as is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Moral messages don't have to be obvious in order to be compelling. I'm thinking about Robert McClosky's classic, Make Way for Ducklings, or (to pick an especially complex and wonderful story) Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Stories, culture, and literacy Not all stories are created alike. In cultures where people do a lot of reading, stories tend to be organized with a beginning, a middle, and an end. In cultures that rely more on an oral tradition, stories follow different patterns, sometimes starting with the most exciting event, for example, then working their way back to the beginning before swinging around to the end. (For more on cultural differences in language and stories, you might want to check out a terrific book called Ways with Words by the anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath. For an exceptionally rich collection of stories in a variety of African American styles, try The People Could Fly edited by Virginia Hamilton.) Children who have spent many hours listening to the beginning-middle-end type of story might have a leg up when it comes to learning to read, since that is also the way written stories tend to be organized. This is not to say that other sorts of stories aren't also wonderful. Probably the best thing is for children to hear as wide a range of stories as possible. Click here to join the discussion on Reading and Your Child
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