Mother-Child Storytelling Ritual

Posted on Oct 25th, 2011 | Comments (0)
Family Relation

How long has it been that we’ve been hearing about mother’s telling children stories to put them to sleep? How many children are still excited about hearing stories during their bed time? I remember how my mother always used to tell a story to me for some morals and values to be delivered to us through stories. It is amazing how story telling can be a means to give lessons to the children, the story becomes a part of the child’s thought and the value being taught is also a part of his thought, the child will then try to put it to practice.

For a mother it is important to know good stories to transmit socio-cultural values. In Pakistan the culture of storytelling during the children’s bed time has vanished, which is not a favourable situation for cultural values to be transferred to next generation.

Despite this the story telling mothers are helping in the development of the personality of the child during the activity of storytelling. The mother who tell stories to their children during bed time encourage them to respond and evaluate the story according to their understanding, this doesn’t just help the child to be better at communicational skill i.e. conversations and questions but it also develops the curiosity in the child. The curiosity in the child helps the child’s mind to ask more questions and learn more.

After we have looked upon all these aspects of storytelling mothers we now need to know that storytelling leaves the children in a world of fantasy which retains the innocence of the children. This process of storytelling also builds a bond between the mother and the children. The child gets more comfortable with sharing everything with the mother because they will develop skills to have a conversation with their mother.

These important aspects of storytelling to children shows how important it is for a mother to develop a storytelling skill and make sure she infuse some morals and values to the children. Mothers in Pakistan are concerned in developing their child’s personality and for that they need to develop the storytelling ritual held every night during bed time once again.