Storytelling Helps Children Bond with Parents

A bedtime story is every child's birthright. Ending the day with a parent reading to them or telling them a tale is an integral part of normal growth and development. Storytelling is as old as language itself. The first yarn was probably told about a day and a half after the spoken word was invented. Others have contended that storytelling is a natural consequence of trying to understand our own dreams, and fables and myths are the attempt to explain the unexplainable.

For the child and parent, reading together has great mutual advantages. Probably the most important is that a parent is there. Having the child intimately close is one of the real reasons to read to children. It is not a race for them to shut their eyes and the parent to close the book and turn out the light. Love is taught by physical presence.

At bedtime, heroes are introduced to a child. The verbal modeling of greatness or goodness from stories can plant similar seeds in the fertile mind of a child. From the ancients the heroics of Odysseus or Hercules or the wonders of Krishna fill the early nights. Religious history also has its mighty righteous warriors who fight for truth and justice and the gentle heroines who gain victories without the sword. Today it is Spider-Man or Batman but their job is still to vanquish evil. Fear is conquered along with the bad guy.

One of the soothing powers of talking to children is simply the soft sound of the parent's gentle speech. Recognition of the maternal voice is already established at birth since the fetus has been eavesdropping on her conversations for the past while.

The calming voice of a parent is what can still the storm of children and bandage their wounds. It is not a coincident that traditional mental health treatment is called talk therapy or that divine reassurance can come from the sounds of a still small voice.

Stories from the nursery also have an interesting power for the child to experience distress and learn to overcome it. Hansel and Gretel is one of the most famous yet scary stories of childhood.

The worse fear of any child is the thought of losing a parent. The next is the fear of an abusing parent and the last is the rejection of a parent. Hansel and Gretel had all three. Their mother dies, the stepmother is cruel, and they are abandoned by their father. Yet in spite of all these crises, and not counting the creepy culinary habits of the witch, brother and sister triumph with resourcefulness.

With listening, not seeing a TV or movie, children are able to self-edit the creepy parts. They can determine how deep and dark are the woods. In modern media, adults, not children, decide how spooky is the forest and how ugly is the witch.

It is not just the telling of their ultimate reunion with a repentant father that gives the folk tale a happy ending. Instead it is the act of reading the scary parts that a parent becomes the antidote. By being present the parent metabolizes the toxicity of the poisonous fear.

Interestingly, one of the more successful treatment modalities in adults for post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is to have the patient re-experience the memories and emotions with someone who is trusted in a safe and secure setting. It is like an adult bedtime story on steroids. This reconstruction attaches new emotions to the old fears, facilitating the brain to heal. They learn they can handle the panic. This facing of fear with trust is similar to what a child encounters with storytelling by a sensitive parent.

It is like bedtime storytelling is a mini-psychological session to prevent or treat childhood PTSD with the parent as the therapist. All of a sudden, "And they lived happily ever after" has a whole new meaning.

Joe Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com.