How To Make Up Children Bedtime Stories
Children bedtime stories can have a positive, lasting impact on your kids in several ways. Aside from the obvious parent/child bonding, research shows your kids master their language much quicker and more efficiently, and their logic skills and stress levels improve while they enjoy children bedtime stories. You can either read the stories to them, or simply make them up on the fly as you go.
I prefer to “make up” children bedtime stories because my sense of humor and distorted creativity ads interest as the story progresses, and my kids love it!
Here are some tips if you still haven’t tried, or if you want to get started. This is what I do:
1. I pick out any living thing that I can base my story on and give them a name, such as (a person, i.e., little Betsy – any other living creature, i.e., a frog named Freddy, a horse named Harry, etc. While I’m picking out a character for the story I start thinking of morals and values I can teach my kids using the character as the vehicle. Here’s a short list of morals and values I may use:
2. Then, I start every single one of my children bedtime stories with, “Once Upon A Time there was a _____________________________________ (horse named Harry. Now Harry the horse…………..)”
3. After that I simply make it up as I go. I eventually introduce other characters to make it fun. Oh, I get stuck sometimes, but by focusing on one of the morals and values such as “having courage,” I’m able to paint a vivid picture in my kids’ minds by making the central character reflect the morals and values by the end of the story.
4. I end each and every story with words kids absolutely adore; “And they lived happily ever after. The end.”
One important note; Try not to make your stories too violent or scary! Your kids will go to sleep frightened, and they’ll probably have a sleepless night and want to crawl into your bed by 3AM! I learned this the hard way.
In Part 2, I’ll give you an example of a bedtime story using these tips.
Your children simply can’t lose with children bedtime stories!