Bedtime Stories Blues
A big part of the law professor’s job involves being able to think on your feet, whether it be in a faculty workshop or in front of a first-year class using the socratic method. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at both of those formats, though I still have a lot to learn. In my nearly five years of parenting, though, I have not really improved in the vital area of nighttime improvisational story telling. This is despite daily practice and genuine effort. I do try to substitute children’s books, which I consider a kind of bedtime story prostethtic for people like me, who have trouble coming up with their own. But, even after I’ve read them a few books, my kids continue to demand an improvised story every night after the lights go out, often with baroque plots whose broad outlines they dictate. As I speak the stories, I am embarrassed by their lameness and by my poor use of language, both of which are only highlighted by comparison with the children’s books I just finished reading. Unlike my colleague, Mike Dorf, I would never dream of posting mine online as podcasts. In fact I hope my kids forget them and at some point stop asking me to tell them. My story telling woes may be due to exhaustion due to chronic sleep deprivation associated with fatherhood, but I fear they reflect some deeper mental defect. I haven’t settled on just what kind or whether it is progressive.
Eduardo ==
If your kids are still asking for your stories, they surely can’t be boring.
My suggestion that I ask Mom to come up to deliver another of her spellbinding bedtime stories was, regrettably, always met with cheers by my children.
I’m still confounded by why my kids were not enthralled with my nightly dotCommonweal comboxes readings.
When they’re a little older, your children can tell you a bedtime story …that gets very interesting. My six year old has one story about a bad seed child named “Fred” that gets more and more elaborate each time she tells it.
I always had problems with good plot lines. As an attorney, I can certainly embellish any already organized story.
I liberally borrowed plot lines from online boy scout skits and “shaggy dog” puns.
My grown chidren still have not forgiven me that I would take a half hour to describe how the bad guys had captured the rary (a relative of the unicorn and the source of goodness in the kingdom) and how the villians intended to throw the rary off the cliff but couldn’t find a suitable cliff high enough. Tensions build until the protagonist finally catches up with the bad guys shouting, “It’s a long way to tip a rary” thereby saving the entire kingdom.
Plenary indulgences can come in handy.
Children “demand” improvisional entrtainment at bedtime? Mimados, Eduardo.
Improvisational. Sorry.
I’d think bedtime would be a fine time for introducing them to great childhood liturature. Help them to acquire a taste for excellence.
Oh, David Smith, as a dedicated reader and an English major I am so with you on this. However, in my extensive experience reading bedtime stories (and naptime stories oh, please please, take this nap, mommy is soooo tired) what I have found is that children, ever the traditionalists,and surely this should please you, want the same XX%%%## story every night! I think this was payback for playing Mozart, Bach and Brahms every night at dinner. Take that, Mommy! Pow! Anyway, my own dear mother, Irish and not sainted, would tell me a story every night that she made up. Not so much a reader, my mom. It was always about a child being pursued by monsters and other evil people. I loved it. Thank you, mom. You taught more than you could ever know.
Tell them a story about YOUR childhood, Eduardo. I used to love to hear my parents tell about their lives as children. My kid liked to hear stories Raber and I told, to a large extent b/c most of our extended family had died or moved far away before he was born, and it gave him a sense of connection.
Really simple things like a trip your family took once, a trick you played on your brother, who your neighbors were, what it was like to go to a drive-in movie, what it was like to sit at the table with Raber’s six aunties all talking at once.
Is making up bed-time stories for kids an Irish tradition? My parents read stories to us, but they didn’t ever make them up that I can remember. My grandmother’s mother was Irish, but my grandmother didn’t make up stories for us either. I would have really liked that. She did tell us some “family history” stories which I enjoyed.
Books, books, books, but don’t be afraid to improvise a bit. And in my experience, children are more than capable, indeed eager, to add their own improvisations. These can vary marvelously each time they hear the story read again.
And when the children still want stories once the book is done, perhaps build on the book by inventing another chapter, or a BRIEF sequel. And if you sing, even just adequately, a song or two to end, more and more softly as the eyelids close. The struggle to re-open may go on for a minute or two, but the effort will soon become too hard.
I was recently at the wedding of a daughter of dear friends. The Dad’s first dance with his daughter was to the tune of Edelweis, a song he frequently sang to his children at bedtime.
Perhaps I am making it all too easy. My long experience of reading and singing to children at bedtime is a bit behind me now.
Stop beating up yourself Eduardo. Your children will always remember that you were with them at these great times. Your children are most fortunate.
Eduardo, just do what we did – I also ran out of plot lines pretty quickly, so I installed a television and DVD player in every child’s bedroom. Problem solved. Not to brag about how bright my children are, but even now, years later, they can recite Pokemon evolutions (“Jigglypuff evolves into Wigglytuff”) by the dozen, so it’s turned out to be quite a good investment in their education.
We’ve also found that letting them watch TV all day saves us loads of childcare costs and gives Mom and Dad time to shop and play golf.
Not being a person of the most modern persuasions, like Jim (9/2 9:17 am), I probably wouldn’t turn my kids over to the tender mercies of Sony and Hitachi and Disney and PBS. But I’d like to think that I wouldn’t succomb to juvenile demands to play improvisional bedtime entertainer, either. I like Jean’s suggestion (9/1 10:20 pm) – talk to them about a real past, a different universe they’re likely to learn about only from me. And I continue to plump for reading them good literature. At bedtime, the hyperactive little chatterboxes should be winding down to sleep. Then, hopefully, they’ll be able to trail along silently with inspired and gifted storytellers speaking to them of worlds neither child nor parent is privy to. Hopefully.
This has brought back such sweet memories. In addition to repeated readings of favorate books, we use to play a story game that involved my children picking three unrelated things and then I would make up a story using these in the plot. We would all take turns. The stories were bad but the time was precious.
For nearly a month this summer I have had my two grand-children with me, aged 2 & 5. So I have frequently had an opportunity to once again read bed-time stories to little children.
But I often, fall back on improvisation but it almost always includes me picking up two of their pet toys (in this day & age Transformers) and enacting battle scenes with changing voices and lots of sound effects, thus getting them all wound up when I’m really supposed to be getting them calmed down.
Seeing as many of the voices of the “pets” on the Webkinz” site are those of one of my sons maybe he came by it honestly.