“Once upon a time there was a rainbow unicorn with special rainbow powers in her golden horn. Her name was Sara Rainbow Rainbow Sara (no hyphens or dashes, and yes that is her whole name). She was friends with a fairy butterfly named Ruby, but Ruby didn’t have any powers. One day Ruby wasn’t being very kind; she decided to steal the powers from Rainbow Sara Sara Rainbow’s golden horn. This made Sarah Rainbow Rainbow Sara very said, because she couldn’t fly anymore without her special powers. She was also said because her horn became not golden anymore. Sara Rainbow Rainbow Sara had a talk with Ruby, (but not with a peace flower because they didn’t have one) about how it made her sad when she stole her powers. Ruby decided she wanted to fix their friendship so she flew into the clouds and landed in a field of flowers and found another golden sparkling horn. She brought it back to Sara Rainbow Rainbow Sara and gave it to her. Sara Rainbow Rainbow Sara was so happy and her powers came back! The fairy butterfly and the unicorn were friends again. And also because she had two horns now she turned into a rainbow duocorn!”
The above story is one that was told at our dinner table just a few nights ago. Storytelling, real story telling is an art. There are national conferences you can attend, courses you can take, it’s a real serious matter. By no means do I consider myself to be a storyteller but I can say that my skills have improved since becoming a parent. Telling stories has been one of my daughter’s most favorite ways to spend time together. She loves when we read to her, and play pretend with her; but tell her a story, and she’ll melt into your arms and listen so intently it makes you want to keep the story going on forever. We tell stories about when we were young, about when she was a baby, about silly things our pets did when we were kids… all kinds of things.
Now that Darby is a little older, we sometimes ask her to tell us a story. In general it’s been mildly successful, that is, until a few nights ago when we decided to cooperatively tell a story. We were all sitting around the dinner table. Darby started the story off, shared a few lines, and then pointed to one of us to continue from where she left off. We all took turns and ended up with the story of The Rainbow Duocorn.
It may not make perfect sense, but that story is chock full of things - current events in her life, her likes, her struggles. It was an opportunity for us to really listen and tune in to Darby. The truth is, we ended up with a lot more than just a story. We had a family dinner where everyone was engaged, sharing, laughing, and smiling. There was creative thinking, cooperation, turn taking, and respect. There was listening, there was eye contact, there was connection. Maybe there were special powers in the golden horn after all.
Tags: Family, Time Together