The Power of Story Telling to Help Children
Stories help children and adults put specific situations into perspective, as well as allowing them to form their own interpretations of what the stories mean. Storytelling is a valuable, easy tool for helping people understand information and for learning how to solve problems.
Making up stories, and helping children create stories, gives children resources and confidence to interpret situations in life. They can relate hypothetical or fictional situations to reality. The morals of stories, as well as how they can help you work out solutions to real life problems, are a great help in the development of young minds.
To create your own story all you have to do is sit back, take a deep breath and go with the first words that come to your mind. The effect stories and storytelling have on our minds, and how we come to face difficult situations, is extremely powerful.
Here is an example of a story that helps people deal with the issues of making mistakes and failing:
“The wave came from nowhere; a huge, unexpected wave of destruction.
Thomas was left cold and confused. It was such a contrast from just a few minutes earlier.
A few minutes ago, he was happy. He had his red bucket, blue shovel and all the sand he could ever have wanted to play with. The heat of the sun was warming his shoulders, and the spray from the gentle waves was refreshing upon his face. He had a plan and he was loving every minute of making it happen! The wet sand covered his hands and he looked up to see the walls taking shape. His knees were buried deep into the sand, helping him to stay stable amongst all of the activity.
It was going to be the greatest sandcastle he had ever built. He could already hear some whispers of admiration from the people walking by.
But then the wave came. The wave that destroyed everything. How could it happen? It wasn’t supposed to be like that! He had planned every detail properly. He had started building far enough from where the waves crashed into the shore. He had dug a moat to stop water from coming too close, and he’d even built a wall as a barrier. He knew his stuff, and he had done everything he thought was right.
Now the bucket was dancing in and out of the water with every new wave. The blue shovel was half buried where his moat used to be. People were walking by and not making a sound.
Slowly, Thomas picked up the bucket and shovel, sitting on the wet sand.
He had failed.
He had failed.
He had failed.
His small hand tightly grabbed the handle of the shovel, and tears began to stream down his face.
He had failed.
Then his hand released its tight grip on the shovel. He looked up at the sea and buried his hands back into the sand.
Yes, he had failed, but he was not a failure.
Thomas moved a couple of feet away, grabbed the blue shovel and loaded it up. He put the bucket firmly back in its place.
The sun once again warmed his shoulders, his hands were once again covered in sand and he had a smile even bigger than before on his face.”
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Story telling in the context of the child’s own life is valuable in an armoury of tactics and tools, allowing the child to disassociate with the intensity of his or her own concerns. By having the opportunity to then focus on the thoughts and behaviours from an outsider’s point of view the child can gain a level of insight that may not have been achievable otherwise. Within any short story it is difficult to grab the attention, provide depth and aide insight, if one was telling a child such a story, one would look for points at which to interact, or if the child were to be reading the story themselves, opportunities for insight. Use of interrogative language was there, with the child child in the story questioning himself, e.g. ‘How could it happen?”, but if if had been extended throughout that paragraph, for instance, “Didn’t I plan it right?”, “Had I not bult a wall?” may better help the child to whom the story was being told to analyse his or her own situation and come to their own conclusions.
Firstly, this is a great story idea and I think all kids could relate to the situation. It was particularly powerful in the lead-up to the crisis and the crisis itself, but what would be very useful in terms of the work we do would be some understanding of how he came to the realisation that he could succeed in future – eg did he notice something about the situation that reminded him of things that had happened before, or in the surroundings (thinking of Robert the Bruce’s spider, here). This would help kids to understand how they could relate the story to their own experience.
The only other comment I have is that to make your writing even more powerful I would ditch the first paragraph of your intro. Otherwise, good, clear writing which comes to the point and says what you want it to say.
Gill W
“Women who run with the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes it’s a great exploration of the use of storytelling for healing.