Before We Say "Goodnight": How to Tell Bedtime Stories About Your Life and Family
185
Before We Say "Goodnight": How to Tell Bedtime Stories About Your Life and Family
185Overview
Before We Say “Goodnight” will show you how to captivate your child’s imagination with a subject they literally can’t get enough of—you.
In this book, you’ll discover an easy-to-learn three-step method to turn your life experiences, and those of your family, into great bedtime stories, all without notes or memorization. Best of all, you’ll make bedtime one of the happiest parts of the day.
“Our children and grandchildren want to know who we really are. This book provides a wonderful method to share our life with those we love. It’s out of this world!” —Buzz Aldrin, astronaut
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614486022 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morgan James Publishing |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 185 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Beginning
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
ROBERT FROST
* * *
I have told over seven thousand bedtime stories to my three children and rarely repeated any of them. Yes, I've done the math. I tell my kids an original story every night, before they go to sleep. And they ask for one every night. What's more important is that you can do it too. You don't have to be well-read, and you don't need a great memory or speaking voice. You just need to be you and follow a few simple guidelines. This book will show you how it's done.
You'll learn a lot by reading the stories that follow each chapter. They all follow my basic formula for storytelling, as outlined in this book, and will be easy for you to duplicate with your own children. These are stories that my kids particularly enjoyed, and they will give you a good idea of how to tell a story. I always adjust the story to the audience, based on their age and maturity. The stories are presented here just as I've told them to my kids, with a few exceptions. I've titled them for the book, included occasional italicized or parenthetical remarks and made some minor changes for clarity and emphasis. I've also left out the questions and answers that often follow a story.
You have the ability to tell your kids great bedtime stories that they will always remember. All it really takes is your life experience and the desire to connect with your children. You have a built-in advantage in that you have a captive audience, your kids.
Think about it. It's bedtime. Your kids and you are worn out, but they want to wring one more ounce of fun out of the day before they go to sleep. They want a bedtime story, and they are ready to really listen to your story. Unless you have an incredible memory and can draw up great stories at the end of a typically exhausting day and then tell them well, night after night, you won't make it with fairy tales. Thankfully, you have a vast and virtually endless supply of stories from your life experience. There are several advantages to this fact:
• You don't have to prepare anything in advance
• Your kids are interested in who you are and were before they were born
• Your stories are naturally infused with your values
• You are sharing the oral history of their family
• You don't have to tell your stories in any particular order
• You'll never run out of material
• Telling bedtime stories can create a tradition of storytelling in your family which can last for generations.
In reality, these stories could be told anytime. Yet at night, when kids are sleepy and the lights are out, they are perhaps more willing to let Mom or Dad just talk. For the sake of simplicity, when I use the words "parent," "mom" or "dad" in this book, I'm referring to anyone who is important in the life of a child. And everyone has a story to tell. If there is more than one adult in your family, you can trade off telling stories, and don't feel pressured that you have to tell a story every night. You'll find the pace that's right for you.
But what if you're not the one who puts them to bed? No problem. You can tell your stories anytime and anywhere, at a family dinner or vacation, driving to school or even on the phone or through email. If you are a grandparent, your family may have suggested interviewing you to capture the family history. Why not beat them to the punch by telling your story now? The guidelines in this book will show you how, and they apply just as well to stories away from bedtime as those told before we say, "Goodnight."
One more comment about timing: the intent of bedtime stories is to entertain and connect with our children. Occasionally, my kids will find a story frightening or upsetting. I was surprised that what I thought was a funny story about getting my tonsils out had that effect on them. On the rare occasion this happens, I change to another story. I am trying to soothe them to sleep, not keep them awake with worries. There are of course other family stories that are better told to more mature children, when they are ready, away from bedtime.
I always tell bedtime stories with the lights out, because there are fewer distractions to the story and the kids keep heading in the direction of sleep. And my memories are easier to access in the dark. When I told my brother-in-law Bill that I was writing this book, he told me the following story:
"When I was a kid in Pittsburgh, my grandfather would sometimes put us to bed and tell us stories. The lights were always out, and he was usually smoking his pipe. He told us about his life and adventures. In the dark, there were just the sound of his voice and the glow of the pipe, and, when he would take a puff, I could see his face."
I love that story because it's about Bill's love for his grandfather and vice versa, and it's a memory he will always treasure. Bedtime stories are a pathway to a great inheritance — your love for your children and the stories of their family. Don't miss it.
Note to the reader: The stories that follow each chapter are told just as I told them to my children. I refer to Grandpa, Grammy and Aunt Mary Ellen. This is how my children think of them, while in fact they are my parents and my sister. I refer to others as Aunts or Uncles, while they may be aunts, uncles, cousins or other close friends.
A Hot Breakfast
One of my earliest memories happened at breakfast when I was about two and a half. Grandpa was out of town on a business trip, and Aunt Mary Ellen and I were having our breakfast with Grammy. I was sitting in my high chair, as usual, at the kitchen table.
You know how Grammy and Grandpa like antiques? Well, we had a round oak table in the kitchen, where we ate breakfast and most all of our meals. It was covered with a tablecloth, designed with brightly colored flowers. Aunt Mary Ellen must have been about five. It was a school day, and Grammy was hurrying to get us fed, in order to get Aunt Mary Ellen off to kindergarten.
Grammy put a piece of bread in the toaster which sat on the other side of the table. Then she heard the trash truck coming down the street. Grandpa had asked her to be sure to put the trash cans out the night before, and she had forgotten. She jumped up, telling Aunt Mary Ellen to watch me and ran outside to take the trash cans to the street before the workers got there. Well, the moment she went out one door, Aunt Mary Ellen, being an active kid, went out the other.
And I sat there alone eating my oatmeal; that is, until something strange began to happen. Smoke started to come out of the toaster. At first, it was just a little wisp, but it caught my attention. It went straight up like one of those ropes in the cartoons that comes out of a snake charmer's basket.
As I watched it, the smoke grew darker and wider. Pretty soon, smoke was coming out from under the toaster too. And that's when the table caught on fire.
Luckily, I wasn't that close to it, so I just kept watching it to see what would happen next. Suddenly I heard a terrible scream which scared the heck out of me, as Grammy came running into the room and grabbed me out of my high chair. She unplugged the toaster from the wall, ran to the cupboard and grabbed a big pitcher. She filled it with water and threw the water on the fire, as horrible hissing sounds and a great plume of white smoke filled the room.
I didn't get my piece of toast that morning. And for quite a while after that, if you looked under the tablecloth, which I did often, you could see a big black spot where the toaster had been.
CHAPTER 2The Best Storyteller On The Planet
"Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted."
GARRISON KEILLOR
* * *
Who is the best storyteller on the planet? As far as your kids are concerned, you are, because the story you have to tell is the story of your life, and only you can tell it from your unique perspective. That's the story your kids want to hear because they love you. And the way to show them that you love them is by spending your time with them, particularly in the evening as they drift off to sleep.
Children love to spend time with you that is focused on you and them together. But there is too much to do and too much going on, almost all the time. Often I am so rushed, with trying to get everything done, that I try to fool myself and my kids into thinking that running eight errands on a Saturday, with them tagging along, is the same as spending time with them hanging out or playing catch or ping pong. It's not. Bedtime stories are a great way to spend some time together, away from the rush of daily life.
This brings us to the topic of this book: you and your story and why this method works so well. You can tell your story better than anyone, because you've lived it. You don't need any notes. You don't need to plan it in advance, and you can rattle it off as easy as can be. And that is exactly what I'll show you how to do.
Let's start with some basics to get you going. We'll add detail and technique as you read through the book, building on your experience. In Chapters 10 and 11, we'll go through the whole method start to finish. By the end of the book, you'll know exactly how to tell a bedtime story every night, if you wish, with little or no preparation.
You might ask, where do you begin in telling a story? Start with a person, or animal, or both. These people or animals will be the main characters of your story. They need to be doing something, either by themselves or with someone else. The story develops from telling the listener about the action or experience that your characters are engaged in. Put that action or experience in a logical order with a beginning, middle and an end. Add a few details and you will have a story. Remember, a story is not simply a recitation of facts. A story tells of a specific person, or animal, engaged in a specific action or experience.
Let me give you a brief example. "My dad grew up in Lawrence, Kansas." If I simply continue relating his personal statistics, this will be a recitation of facts, not a story. However, if I choose a specific experience he had, I immediately step into story mode. Add a beginning, middle and end, and a story begins to emerge. The more specific and detailed the experience, the better. Think of it as painting a picture with words.
To begin again, "When my dad was a kid, growing up in Lawrence, Kansas, he and his friends were really into animals, wild and otherwise. Somehow, he got a baby alligator and decided to keep it as a pet. He figured an alligator needed to be near water, so he put it in the laundry tub in the basement of his parent's house. Oh, and he somehow forgot to tell his mother that he had an alligator or where he was keeping it. So when she went down into the dark basement to do the laundry and found an alligator in the tub, you can imagine how loudly she screamed because of the alligator and then at him. That was the end of having an alligator as a pet, though not the end of your grandpa's love of animals, wild and otherwise."
Let's review. The story above involves characters, my dad and his mother and a baby alligator, taking action or having a specific experience. Though brief, this story has a beginning, my dad finding the alligator; the middle, putting the alligator in the basement tub; and the end, my grandmother's sudden discovery and the immediate departure of the alligator. Adding detail fills in the picture. You'll find that each of the stories in this book follows this structural pattern. Watch for this pattern, model it and you'll be on your way to telling your own great bedtime stories.
Grandpa and the Pig
When Aunt Mary Ellen got her first house, it was in a part of town where all of the properties were set up like little farms. She had a small house toward the front of a large rectangular lot, with a typical backyard. And behind that yard was a farm.
She had a long barn on one side of the remaining lot that reached most of the way to the back of the property, for farm animals, such as horses, goats and chickens. On the other side of the yard was a garden to grow food such as corn, lettuce and tomatoes, really vegetables of every kind. There was a small orchard of fruit trees with apples, oranges and lemons. When you think about it, almost all the food you would need could be grown or raised right there on her little farm. Behind the barn, a corral covered the width of the remaining lot and was used as a turnout for the barnyard animals.
Grandpa used to love to go over there, I think because it reminded him of his childhood. He grew up in a small town in Kansas. In those days, the town was surrounded by farms, and you can bet there were plenty of farms within a few minutes of his house. Most everyone had a vegetable garden to grow at least part of their own food, and a lot of people kept chickens for eggs too. Grandpa's favorite thing to do in Aunt Mary Ellen's yard was to rake leaves. I think he found it relaxing after a hard week's work.
Now then, Aunt Mary Ellen's neighbor had a pig, a very large pig, a Yorkshire, which had white pointy ears. He probably weighed close to a thousand pounds, was about six feet long and nearly three feet tall. The pig liked to roll in the mud to stay cool on a hot day. A five-foot tall wooden fence ran the length of the property, separating Aunt Mary Ellen's and her neighbor's yards. The pig lived in a small mudcovered pen just on the other side of the fence.
Anyway, one warm afternoon Grandpa was out in back, raking up leaves under a huge walnut tree. And there were a lot of leaves because it was fall. He stopped to rest and went over to the fence to take a look at the pig, as it was snorting around in its pen. Grandpa was probably daydreaming about his grandfather's farm and stood there quietly for several moments, admiring the pig.
After a while, Grandpa gently said, "Hey Pig," and that's when the trouble began. Because the fence was high, the pig hadn't seen or heard Grandpa walk up. The pig was startled by the sound of Grandpa's voice and, in panic, whipped its head around to see where this sudden threat was coming from. Only Grandpa's face was showing over the fence, and, as the pig spun its head around, along with it came all of the slop from its snout. The pig slop went flying through the air, with the greatest of ease, and hit Grandpa square in the face.
Well, you can imagine Grandpa was fairly startled himself and pretty grossed out too, standing there with a rake in one hand and pig slop all over his face. But after he cleaned up, he thought it was pretty funny and enjoyed telling that story to the family.
From then on, however, Grandpa made sure to let the pig know he was there, before he went over to have a look.
CHAPTER 3A Boy and His Dad
"Do the best you can and don't take life too serious."
WILL ROGERS
* * *
My wife and I are both big readers. We love to read, and all of the employees at our favorite bookstore turn and smile whenever we walk in. When we had our first child, John, we resolved that he would be a reader too. We decided that the best way to make that happen was to read to him every night, when we put him to bed. Clever, huh? Sometimes Liz would read, sometimes both of us would read, and we rarely missed a night.
Over time, we fell into a routine that Liz would read to him, then turn out the lights and sit with him for a few minutes. Then I would come in and sit for a while, until he got sleepy. He had us fairly well-trained. Russell Baker sums it up nicely, "When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents may sometimes have trouble distinguishing you from the Hope Diamond."
As John got older and this routine became well-ingrained, he began to ask me for a bedtime story. I began with "Goldilocks" and then "The Three Little Pigs," "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Jack and the Beanstalk." After that, I was pretty much out of material. Though I had majored in English literature in college, I couldn't think of any other stories to tell or condense in a way that would have any real meaning, or be entertaining, to a two-year-old. So I did what any of you would do. I went back to "Goldilocks" and changed the script. John found this mildly entertaining for a few days, but that was about it.
Then I switched to nonsensical stories made up on the spur of the moment with no real plot or point, which are harder to pull off after a full day of work and kids. You may be one of those parents who have the gift to make up a great story out of thin air that is entertaining to both you and your kids. However, if you're like me, telling this kind of story at the end of a long day, on an empty tank of gas, just leaves my kids saying, "Huh?" When I've attempted to pass off one of these dogs onto my kids, they start barking.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Before We Say "Goodnight""
by .
Copyright © 2014 Hank Frazee.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword,
Introduction,
1. The Beginning,
2. The Best Storyteller on the Planet,
3. A Boy and His Dad,
4. Time Travelers,
5. Purpose and Meaning,
6. Challenges of Fatherhood,
7. Traditions,
8. Building Bridges,
9. Share Your Treasure,
10. Story Prompters,
11. Mildly to Wildly Entertaining,
12. The Moral of the Story,
Closing Thoughts,
Resources,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,