Creating a Story Routine
When you start telling stories with your family, you will likely find that one of the most helpful practices for you and the kids you love is to set up a story routine. This doesn’t need to be a laborious effort. It simply means picking a regular place where you will tell the stories, selecting a time that works well for your family schedule, and developing a few habits you will implement around that time.
Below are our top 5 tips for developing a story routine and ideas for implementation.
1. Story routines can take place at any time of day and in essentially any location where you can minimize other distractions.
We cannot stress this enough. While bedtime is a great time for storytelling to occur, it is not the only available time and setting. Ideas for times and places to create your story routine include:
On the drive to or home from school/childcare
At the dinner table
While on family walks
At restaurants whenever you go out to eat
On long road-trips
2. Story routines do not need to happen every day to be effective.
To avoid burnout for the teller, we recommend that they not be every day. Once or twice a week is definitely enough for primary caregivers to form rituals that this is what we do and when we do it. Less frequency can also help the time of the event feel more special for your young audience. If your family always seems busy, pick the least busy night of the week. This could be every Monday because it is the one day of the week when you don’t have soccer, karate, or other activities. It could be Sunday afternoon because that seems to be when you all get to relax. Extended family can even set up less frequent story routines, although we would encourage these to occur at least once a month. Choose what makes sense for your family schedule!
3. Story routines can happen in person or virtually.
This is important because we are big proponents of using storytelling to bridge geographic distances. This is a practice that parents can do with their children. However, it is also a great tool for grandparents, aunts, and uncles to use to bond with children … even if they live in another state or country! We will address in another post how to make virtual story time most effective. With all of the technology we have available to us these days, you should feel free to do story time using a video conference platform like Zoom, FaceTime, Google Meet, or even Microsoft Teams. In a pinch, while traveling internationally, I have even just done an audio recording of my kids’ story for that night and emailed it to my husband to play for them.
4. Implement the rule that before you begin the story, the child needs to be calm and quiet.
This sets both you and the child up for success in your respective roles of teller and listener. I have learned the hard way that if my boys are jumping around or chattering amongst themselves when I say “Once upon a time”, our story is going to go nowhere fast. I will lose my train of thought. They will get frustrated that the story is not interesting enough. Therefore, we now have a rule that they need to be in their beds, lying down, and quiet before I come in and start the story.
5. Reinforce the beginning and end of story time with cues.
In The Legendary Connection Story Process, we talk about the importance of having an opening and closing phrase or song to help ease your child into the mindset of the story world and to help bring them back to the real world. You can create your own phrases or use time-tested phrases like, “Once upon a time,” and “And they all lived happily ever after.” These phrases or tunes can also be supplemented with physical reminders and positive reinforcement. This could include buying them a stuffed animal or other toy that they get to hold only during story time and that you put somewhere out of reach at other times. It could include lighting and extinguishing a candle (maybe one that is battery-powered). You can create a reward system that every time you finish a story, the child adds a puffball to a mason jar or puts a star on their daily routine chart.
Many people think of story time as something that occurs at bedtime. And that can be an amazing way to close your day and help send your kids off to sleep. But we hope that through this post we have shown you that it is not the only time and place where storytelling can be successful. Be honest with yourself about the time you have available and when you feel most able to summon the energy to tell a story. Telling stories is about giving the child you love your focused attention. They will benefit immensely from you doing this in any routine way.
