Storytelling for Skeptics and Scoundrels

How to Tell Stories to Children

No matter who you are or where you’re at in life, your stories matter to your children. Telling stories to kids isn’t about being groovy and liberated. It’s about connecting. It’s about being real.

Storytelling is something humans have been doing for thousands of years, because it works. It will work today if you're perfect, but it will also work if you're not. It will even work in spite of any self-doubt, bad attitudes, or feelings of exhaustion. Because it’s not about being good. It’s about connecting.

It’s easy to think that storytelling is for perfect parents, the fairy godmother types, the ones who have it all together. But that would mean there are perfect parents out there, and we know that’s not true. We’re imperfect, each of us, in lots of ways. And we also have incredible gifts.

Storytelling is a way to share those gifts, and it allows for a huge range of diverse expression. You can be funny. You can be serious. You can make mistakes. No matter how you do it, it will bring you and your children closer.