Connecting families
through storytelling.
As parents, one of our least favorite
things to hear is,
“it goes by so fast.”
Partly because it’s tiring to carry guilt over not somehow appreciating every ounce out of what is a difficult and tiring season of life…
…and partly because there’s some truth to the phrase.
Time blurs from monotony.
Unique experiences stick in our memories,
and those require intentionality on our part.
So how do we get out of that rut?
Unique experiences that help mark the time.
But barring expensive vacations or doing things that blow up our schedules,
how do we find those?
Stories.
Finding stories isn’t hard. We’re inundated by them. (So are our kids.)
And whether we like it or not, our kids are getting stories from us that they are going to carry with them for the rest of their lives.
This isn’t a guilt trip.
This is an opportunity to recognize that we can do some pretty simple things to connect with our kids by intentionally telling stories together.
I almost missed this opportunity myself.
In March 2020, I went for a neighborhood walk to clear my head and my daughter tagged along because her school year was cut short.
We passed by an empty lot with a mailbox sitting on it and she saw
an invisible house.
So we began taking regular walks together, brainstorming who lived there and why it was invisible, and I realized just how much of a connecting force it was to tell stories together.
What happened next?
We bought an old Smith-Corona (I know) typewriter, wrote a first draft, got some professional editing done, and it was published under the shared pen name C.W. Task by the time her birthday rolled around in her first grade year.
While that was special (especially when the teacher read a chapter a day to her class and they kept asking what was going to happen next), the real win was spending intentional time with her.
It doesn’t take a published book to tell stories together (having a project to work on together helps, but it isn’t necessary), but the mindset shift to engage with my children in storytelling has become a special bond.
And I want to help other parents have experiences
like I did.
Wait, who is C.W. Task?
I should probably give a quick explanation (a longer one is available here), but when I was my daughter’s age, I tied up my parents’ phone line writing stories on a pre-AOL internet service called Prodigy, and my username was CWTS94C.
Working on stories with my kids brought back a long-dormant level of creativity in myself, which allowed me to return to storytelling with the carefree level of sitting at my computer typing up stories about Star Wars and Ninja Turtles (and later acting them out in my backyard by myself as an only child).
I wasn’t trying to reach a mass audience of people I didn’t know.
I was connecting with an audience of one.
Since I want to protect my children’s anonymity, we created a joint pseudonym… but to me, C.W. is a reminder that connecting with my children over stories not only invests in them, but it’s an invitation to return to a joy I thought I had left behind in childhood.
Invite Your Child Into a Meaningful Story and Reignite Your Own Imagination.
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Follow along!
I’ll be sharing videos and posts regularly on ways you can engage with your children through stories, lessons I’m learning, and lots of free content over the Fictionsmith Family social channels.
“The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.”
— Fred Rogers