Storytelling: The Parenting Tool You Didn’t Know You Needed

Shortly after I moved into my first apartment, I decided to make my mother’s beef stew. The recipe called for red wine, but after I started cooking, I realized I didn’t have a corkscrew. I tried everything I could think of to open that bottle. I don’t remember how I did it in the end, but I do remember that wine splattered all over my new kitchen. A corkscrew is a simple tool, but it makes the job of opening a bottle easy. I bought one, and I’ve never since tried to take out a cork without it.

God has given parents tools to train up our children in the way they should go. We discipline to teach them how to obey. We praise them when they do something well. We pray for them. We teach them by our example.

What if I told you there’s another tool you can add to your parenting tool belt? One that wouldn’t replace any of the other tools but, like a corkscrew, would make some hard jobs easier? Parents, let me recommend to you the art of storytelling.

Prophet’s Tool

My favorite example of the power of stories is the prophet Nathan confronting King David. David sins grievously by stealing Uriah’s wife, impregnating her, and then having Uriah killed to cover his tracks. The “man after [God’s] heart” (1 Sam. 13:14) runs headlong into paths of unrighteousness.

When Nathan approaches David, he doesn’t mention David’s sin or the sixth and seventh commandments. Instead, he tells him a story about a rich man who took the beloved pet lamb of a poor man to feed it to company. David is eager to see justice done and right this wrong. It’s only when Nathan utters the famous words “Thou art the man” that he realizes the story is really about his own sin. The story crept past his defenses to reach his heart and work repentance.

Why Stories Help

Children don’t like to be preached to, but they love stories. This is important to remember when we’re trying to teach them right behavior or address a sinful pattern in their lives. Parents should address disobedience directly and openly, but once that’s done, stories can reinforce what you’re teaching by engaging a child’s imagination. A good story can creep past defensiveness. It can keep them from feeling like we’re revisiting their sin or mistakes. And it can help them imagine behaving differently next time.

A good story can creep past defensiveness. And it can help children imagine behaving differently next time.

When my oldest son was first learning to obey, my husband and I would tell him stories about “Pete.” Pete happened to misbehave in just the sort of ways our son would. But Pete was often worse, and his naughty deeds would catch our son’s imagination. He loved hearing about the bad things Pete would do, but he also loved the resolution when Pete got a consequence of some sort and learned never to do that thing again.

By telling our son stories about Pete, we took the focus off his own behavior while still reinforcing the need to do right. This meant we weren’t constantly bringing up his past sins (“Remember when you told a lie?”), but we were helping our son meditate on God’s commands and imagine doing the right thing the next time.

It’s Not as Hard as You Might Think

You may not think of yourself as a storyteller. It’s hard to make up high-quality stories. But the good news is that young children aren’t a sophisticated audience. They actually love some of the things that would drive older kids or adults crazy. They thrive on formulaic stories with lots of repetition. They love being able to anticipate exactly what’s going to come next. In short, they love the kinds of stories that are easy to tell.

Here are some situations where storytelling might be useful.

1. To Distract

Your children hate to have their nails trimmed. While you cut their nails, tell them a story about a bunny who disobeys his mother and leaves his burrow and gets lost. To the bunny’s relief, a friendly owl guides him back home—just as you finish the tenth nail—where he vows to never disobey again. (Distracting stories can also be a good way to comfort children when they are hurt or sick.)

2. To Caution

Your children don’t like to wear sunscreen. Tell them an imaginary story about a little girl who didn’t wear sunscreen and got such a bad sunburn that she couldn’t bend her arms and legs for a week! After that, she always reminded her mother to put on sunscreen. (If you’re hesitant to tell your children a story they might find scary, keep in mind that the point of a cautionary tale is to make frightening something that should be frightening. The most famous cautionary tale, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” ends with a child being eaten. Telling lies is dangerous, and cautionary tales help children imagine the consequences of dangerous behavior.)

3. To Prepare

Your kids act shy at church and don’t like to respond when people say hello. Before church, tell them about a little girl who felt shy but worked hard to smile and answer grown-ups’ questions. After a few conversations, it got much easier, and one of the people she met owned the town toy shop. The woman invited the little girl to visit the shop to test new toys that weren’t yet for sale. After telling the story, try role-playing a few interactions, pretending to have conversations with people at church.

4. To Shape Their Moral Imagination

You’ve laid down a boundary for your child, and he keeps getting as close to the line as he can without going over it. Tell him a story about a boy who visited the Grand Canyon. He decided to go as close to the edge as he could without going over. All of a sudden, his foot slipped on a rock and started to slide. His dad grabbed his shirt and kept him from going over. After that, the little boy learned to stay away from the edge. Explain to your child that when he tries to get as close as possible to disobeying, he’s acting like the boy on the edge of a cliff. Instead, he should stay far away from doing what’s wrong.

These are simply shells of stories. You can enliven them with details, names, and perhaps even some silliness. Invent recurring characters with quirky traits. But remember, small children don’t mind repetition or predictability, so you don’t need to be a creative genius.

Keep the Conversation Going

Deuteronomy 6:6–7 sets a high bar for parents. We’re to talk about God’s commands with our children when we sit in our house, walk by the way, lie down, and rise. In other words, we’re meant to be talking with our kids about God’s ways all the time. This doesn’t mean we preach sermons all day. But we should always help our children connect what’s going on in their lives to what we know about God.

Storytelling is a great way to keep this conversation going. And instead of making children’s hearts sink, it’ll bring them delight.

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