When my older daughter was 4½ years old, she had started the morning with a small hole in her pants that by the end of the day was exposing most of her knee. Indeed, children seem to respond well to any story offering magic or fantasy, perhaps because, being young, they live more closely to the outer worlds of magic and fantasy themselves. Such popular themes in fairytales demonstrate to children, as Bruno Bettleheim says in his classic study The Uses of Enchantment, "that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable" but that if one meets the hardships, one will "master all obstacles and at the end emerge victorious." The end is sure to be satisfying - the triumph of the youngest of three children, the tackling of impossible tasks, the glory of a troubled romance set right. Why is the attention of children captivated by stories? For one thing, the pattern of stories (a beginning-middle-end) sets up a structure that children recognize and understand. The next story began and, once again, a hush replaced the bedlam. The would-be hooligans remained utterly still until the completion of the story, at which point they almost instantly burst into mischief again. Three times I stopped the car to reprimand the miscreants for fighting, yellow, throwing, hitting. The sense of concentration is palpable.Īs a Girl Scout leader, I was once transporting a station wagon full of shockingly raucous 6-year-old Brownies. A child engrossed by the travels of an errant fruit fly turns his or her full attention to the teller of the tale. Event casual openings such as, "Here's a story I heard today you might like." or "Did you hear the story about.?" bring dangling and impatient feet to freeze mid-swing. The magical opening, "Once upon a time." or "Many years ago." will focus young eyes which, just a moment ago, had been aimlessly darting along the ceiling. Parents worldwide will attest to the phenomenon that is children and stories. Indeed, it appears that children demand stories with the same insistence as they hunger for attention or food! From advertisers' sales pitches, to speeches delivered by public figures, to the fervent promise of broadcasters for "More on that story after our commercial break."Īmong children, however, storytelling holds even a stronger and deeper magic. Yet storytelling remains strongly rooted in our human cultural experience after all those years. Through imagination, we tap into creativity that is the foundation of innovation, self-discovery, and change.In these days of "virtual-this" and "electronic-that," there are those who might relegate storytelling to the dusty realm of a bygone era. We can step out of our own shoes, see differently, and increase our empathy for others. By engaging our imagination, we become participants in the narrative. Stories are the pathway to engaging our right brain and triggering our imagination.Stories create genuine emotions, presence (the sense of being somewhere), and behavioral responses. To the human brain, imagined experiences are processed the same as real experiences. Within the context of the story arc, we can withstand intense emotions because we know that resolution follows the conflict. Humans seek certainty and narrative structure is familiar, predictable, and comforting. Stories are how we explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we justify our decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create our identities, and define and teach social values. Call them schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narratives. Stories allow us to understand ourselves better and to find our commonality with others. ![]() Stories are the common ground that allows people to communicate, overcoming our defenses and our differences. Through stories, we share passions, sadness, hardships, and joys. They transcend generations, they engage us through emotions, and they connect us to others. ![]()
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