How Toddlers Benefit from Regular Storytelling Sessions

It all started with the magic words “Once upon a time,” and you were hooked while you were still young. There is something enchanting with storytelling especially if you share the moment with the people you love. Now, every time you hear a page being turned and someone reading a story, do you also wish to go back to the time when you were just a kid? But what did storytelling give you aside from entertainment?

It turns out that regular storytelling sessions with your kid have a lot of benefits. It doesn’t matter if you have created personalized books for your kids or you just retold the things you’ve heard before. What is important is that you spend time and effort in helping your child make the most of the benefits. But really, what do you get out of storytelling?

Teach Values in Interesting Ways

Have you ever noticed that children love emulating their favorite story character? When you try to tell them a story with a meaningful message, they can pick up important lessons as shown in the story. Children can learn various values, like honesty, courage, perseverance, kindness, empathy, and the like.

Encourage Better Communication Skills

A child’s mind craves for more information about the world. And your kid may have a lot of unanswered questions as you do a storytelling session. They are just waiting for the right moment to get the responses from you.

So as you go along the activity, encourage them to ask questions from time to time. Try your best to be creative about your answers as long as they are close to the plot or to real-world wisdom.

Promote Cultural Awareness

If you want to help your child familiarize your culture, then tell them stories that revolve around these plots. It will aid them in understanding the importance of culture and why people have these traditions or what celebrations and festivities they can also enjoy as part of tradition.

Reading culturally diverse stories can even give them ideas on their own roots as they grow up. Most importantly, they can be exposed to other cultures that are different from theirs and be aware that the world is bigger than their own neighborhood.

Develop Verbal Skills

Encourage your child to be acquainted with language through fun, creative storytelling. Going through the story together, you can explain new words and phrases for better comprehension and word retention.

You can ask them to repeat some words for pronunciation practice too. Doing these activities regularly will definitely fortify your child’s mental and verbal capacity.

Form a Better Listening Habit

Because of their curious nature, a child tends to find it hard to concentrate on something for a long time. And if they have a lesser attention span, more often than not, they do more talking or playing rather than listening.

Hence, with a storytelling session, you are allowing your kid to practice the art of active listening. Since they have to pay attention to you in order to understand the whole story, they are forced to concentrate on the details.

Broaden the Imagination

Transport your child to a different time, place, or world. Expand their imagination to a wide array of possibilities through storytelling. By letting them imagine how the story goes, you are enhancing their creativity and imagination. This, in turn, will help them open their mind to unconventional and ingenious ideas.

Hone a Good Memory

Aside from being a form of entertainment, storytelling can be a great memory enhancer. Wanna try a good trick?

Read a story for a couple of times, and then allow your kid to narrate it back to you after a few days. See how many details they can remember from the story. Allow them to improvise some of the details as long as they can get the gist of the tale.

Start Telling Stories Now

There is no better way to open your child’s mind to the world than storytelling can. Thus, if possible, put in more time and effort in the activity. It has a lot of benefits aside from cognitive development and character formation. It can be a creative way to introduce your child to the world and life in general.

Allow them to create their own story too. Help them make the story characters come alive. Encourage more activities so your child is emotionally and mentally healthy. And don’t be afraid to delve more into fairy tales and fables because they can offer more than just happy endings and happy ever afters.