Stories are very important to teach your children new things and enhance their power of imagination. Albert Einstein was once asked “What to do if I want to make my child a genius?” and Einstein replied, “Tell them stories.” Hearing the answer, the person asked again “What to do if I want to make my child even more genius?” Einstein again replied, “Tell them more stories.” So, from the reply of the greatest theoretical physicist, you can easily judge the importance of stories.
In my childhood, I used to listen to stories from my grand maa and grandpa—the tales of ghosts, demons, kings, and queens. But nowadays most of us might have spent our time with gadgets. Gadgets have become an essential portion of our lives but the truth is they cannot replace the emotion of human touch.
Telling stories to your children is not a tough job. You can share any interesting incident from your childhood or read a moral story from any storybook. It will increase your attachment with your children and you can feel a strong emotional bonding with them that you always desire. Moreover, it will help to increase the imaginative power of your children, enhance their listening power and creativity.
Benefits of Telling Stories to Your Children
Improves Vocabulary
One of the most important advantages of listening to stories is that it helps your children learn new words and thereby their vocabulary will increase. Children learn new things by imitation. When you will narrate a story, your children will try to imitate the words you utter and through this process, their vocabulary will increase naturally. A growing vocabulary will enable your children to express themselves clearly.
Improves listening Skills
Research shows that children do not like to listen, rather they like to utter newly learned words. If you tell them stories regularly, they will develop their interest in stories, and in this process, they will form the habit of listening. As a result, they will have the ability to understand anything very easily. Hence, as a conscious parent, your primary duty is to recite stories often so that your children get the necessary training to become good listeners.
Improves Power of Imagination and Thinking
Stories help to develop the imaginative power of your children by introducing a whole new world in front of them. It stimulates their curiosity and power of thinking enormously. Fantasy is the ultimate key for any kind of innovation, creation, discovery, and exploration. As soon as they heard a story, they create a world of imagination, draw pictures of the incident and plot the scenario of the entire story in their mind. As a result, the imagination and creativity of your children develop gradually.
Boosts Memory Power
Listening to stories is a very good practice to boost the memory power of your children. To understand the whole story, they need to understand the characters, backgrounds, various associations, and details. So, they need to concentrate hard to understand it. You can test their memory by asking them to describe the story that has been narrated to them a few days back. This process will help to boost the memory power of your children and also gear up their concentration power. As a result, schooling will become easier for them.
Enhances Communication Skills
Naturally, children are very shy and soft and they hesitate to ask questions- this is highly detrimental to their personal growth. If your children have the habit of listening to stories, they can easily overcome this problem and can ask questions with confidence and faith in them. During story-time, your children get a chance to interact and discuss characters and storylines and this method improves the communication skills in your children.
Injects Values
The things you cannot achieve through command can be achieved through telling stories. Stories help to instill values in an enjoyable and stress-free manner. A good moral story can put a lifelong impact on the memory of your children, which cannot be achieved through moral advice. Stories can be helpful in inculcating life skills like honesty, courage, respect, generosity, self-confidence, which eventually help your children become successful and good human beings.
Teaches Empathy
Stories have the ability to teach your children to be sensitive towards others, improve their emotional intelligence and help them feel empathetic towards others’ needs. During the activity of listening and understanding stories, children subconsciously develop the ability to think and feel for others. Learning to relate to others and a sense of empathy will help your children develop their social skills and make them better human beings.
Relaxes the Mind
Bedtime stories can be a great source of relaxation for your children. It helps your children to forget the stress and strain of the day and indulge in the world of fantasy. It sets the mood for a comfortable and sound sleep. Moreover, when you cannot spend quality time with your children during the day, a bedtime story can make them feel your love and care for them.
Conclusion
Children are like soft clay. You can mold their personality and thoughts as per your wish. Stories are a very good and scientific way of doing so. Children characterize their parents as their role models and try to copy their actions. They get inspired by the thoughts of their parents and try to become like them. Through stories, moral values, life skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills, listening skills, etc get injected into your children and this makes them better human beings.
So, it is time for you to act for the holistic development of your children.