Capture imaginations while creating memories for your grandchildren.

As a child on her grandfather’s knee, Jennilyn Weight listened in rapture while he told stories.

He captured her imagination telling and retelling familiar favorites like “The Little Red Hen” and “The Three Little Pigs” or while spinning the fabric of family lore with true tales of his pioneer childhood.

Storytelling is “one of the best ways to warm up your grandchildren,” says Weight, who teaches storytelling through Community Colleges of Spokane and the Spokane Storytelling League. “The spoken word will paint images in the child’s mind and help them understand where the grandparents are coming from. At a later date, when it is critical for the child to have someone to trust, they will trust the grandma.”

Start with stories from books

For grandparents who want to learn the art of storytelling, the easiest place to start is at the library with its stacks of age-appropriate stories.
“Start reading to them, and if you find a story they really like, then get comfortable with telling it,” says Barbara Brown, a league member and grandmother.
Become one of the characters in the story and find its personality rather than reading word for word, recommends Mary Neary, another storytelling grandma. Storytelling gets easier with practice, Neary says, and provides “a lot of reward from the children. … And who better than grandma or grandpa to take the time to sit and tell a story?”

Tell your own story

Telling your personal history and stories you learned from parents and grandparents creates a sense of identity and belonging and helps your grandchildren relate to the child inside you. You can tell these stories, true to life or with fanciful fictionalizing, at dinner or family reunions.

Kids want to know where you came from, Neary says.

“A lot of times people forget to tell them who they were,” she says. “Tell them an anecdote or experience you’ve had along the way.”

One grandma created a notebook with stories and recipes from family members so when the grandchildren come to visit, they make one of the recipes, and she tells its accompanying story.

“Their favorite stories are stories about you,” Brown says. “They like to hear about things you did when you were a child.”

Share your grandchildren’s stories

Grandchildren also love stories about themselves—even toddlers like to hear about when they were babies.

“It can be as simple,” Brown says, “as asking them if they remember when ... ”

Photo albums can spark those memories, Weight says, adding that once you’ve told a story, expect to hear one in return.

Listening to stories, Neary says, “stimulates their imagination.”

This creates an opportunity to see and share in your grandchild’s life, says Brown, who says a benefit to storytelling is that grandchildren “will share a part of their personality that you might not see otherwise. They will express how they feel about something the story triggered in them.”

Pass on values

Whether you use a written story, like one of Aesop’s fables, or tell a tale from your childhood, the values in a story will have more a memorable impact than any lecture.

Telling how you burned down the barn, for example, is more effective than talking about the dangers of playing with matches.
But beware of breaking trust by explaining a story’s moral.

“You could insert a little, ‘My goodness, isn’t that little pig stupid,’ but if you do, then you ruin it for the kid,” Weight says. “Tell them the story, and they will pick it up where they are at.”

After listening to the story of Stellaluna, Brown’s grandson made a connection between the fruit bat protagonist and a boy at school who had been teased, but it wasn’t a moral she pointed out. He figured it out.

“I don’t moralize stories. Then you are preaching to them,” Brown says. But she will use a story as a cheerful distraction if a child has gotten in trouble.

“I’ll say, ‘Come here. Let me tell you about this little boy. He was having the same problems as you are.’ I just pull them up close, and we cuddle a little, and pretty soon you get them laughing,” she says.

Make it fun

Since children love repetition, your repertoire of stories needn’t be large. But to keep them clamoring for more, use exaggeration, voice inflection, hand gestures and eye contact to make the story come alive, or use one of their stuffed animals or toys as a prop.

“Take their favorite cat and have it get into all sorts of trouble and have to figure out how to get out,” Weight suggests.

The children enjoy making sounds in a story, Brown says. “The bear went ‘rumph,’ and they go ‘rumph’—so they are part of the story. You can do it with any story that has sounds or accents they like.”

Having fun is what’s important—because if you and they are having fun, you’re also creating warm memories so maybe someday they’ll talk about their grandma or grandpa who told them stories.

“You look at the faces, and their eyes are so big, and they are completely entranced,” Neary says. “It is like filling a bucket with gold. Think of what you get back: just a big bucket of love and trust.”

Jill Barville is a freelance writer who lives in Spokane Valley. She was a U-Hi Titan.

The Spokane Storytelling League meets the second Tuesday of the month, September–June at 7 p.m. with storytelling from 7:30-8:30 p.m. Corbin Community Center, 827 W. Cleveland. For more information, contact: Jennilyn Weight, 467-5703