How Children Learn to Tell Stories
Narrative development—how children learn to tell and understand stories—is a fundamental aspect of language and cognitive growth. Keep reading to explore the stages of narrative development, its importance, and how parents and caregivers can encourage storytelling in young children.
Stages of How Children Learn to Tell Stories
1. Preverbal Narrative Skills (Birth to 2 Years)
• Behavioral Narratives: Around 6 to 12 months, babies may use gestures or facial expressions to indicate actions they’ve experienced or seen. For example, a child might point to a toy and say “Uh-oh” to indicate something that has fallen.
• Symbolic Play: Toddlers begin to engage in pretend play, which involves using objects to represent something else. This kind of imaginative play lays the foundation for narrative development by requiring children to structure sequences of events and use their imagination.
How parents can help: Encourage storytelling through play and engage in activities that require imitation, such as pretending to cook or acting out familiar routines. You can also narrate your own actions as you go about daily activities, providing a simple model of how stories unfold.
2. Early Narrative Skills (2 to 3 Years)
At this stage, toddlers begin to create more structured narratives, though their storytelling is still often fragmented or incomplete.
• Scripts: Around 2 years old, children begin to develop “scripts” for familiar events. These are simple, predictable sequences of actions that children can recount, such as “eat dinner” or “go to bed.” The narrative is often short and may focus on just one event.
• Sequencing Events: By age 3, children can begin to organize simple sequences of events. For example, they might tell a story like “I went to the park. I saw a dog. The dog barked.”
How parents can help: Ask open-ended questions to encourage children to tell stories, such as “What did you do today?” or “Can you tell me about your favorite part of the story?” Encourage play that requires sequential thinking, like stacking blocks in a particular order or arranging toys in a specific sequence.
3. Complex Narrative Skills (3 to 4 Years)
Children start to understand the need for logical sequencing, incorporating more details, and describing characters and settings.
• Story Structure: Children begin using a more defined structure for their stories, incorporating a beginning, middle, and end. For instance, they might tell a simple story like, “I went to the zoo. I saw a lion. The lion roared.”
• Characters and Actions: Children begin to incorporate characters, actions, and settings more clearly in their stories. They may describe what a character is doing (“The lion is sleeping”) or where it is happening (“The zoo is big”).
• Cause and Effect: By 4, children start to include cause-and-effect relationships in their narratives. They can express why things happen, such as, “I didn’t eat my dinner, so I was hungry later.”
How parents can help: Engage in activities that involve story creation, such as using dolls or action figures to act out different scenarios. For instance, encourage your child to use full sentences and describe their stories with more details. Then, ask questions like “What happened next?” or “How did that make you feel?”
4. Mature Narrative Skills (5 to 6 Years)
By the time children are 5 or 6 years old, their storytelling is becoming more structured and sophisticated. They can narrate longer stories, include multiple events, and use more complex language to describe their characters’ motivations and emotions.
How parents can help: Encourage children to tell longer stories, either orally or through writing. Discuss the emotions and motivations of characters, asking things like, “How do you think the character feels right now?” or “Why do you think that happened?” You can also read more complex stories together and discuss the sequence of events.
References
- Hutson-Nechkash, Peg. (2001). Narrative Toolbox: Blueprints for Storybuilding. EauClaire, WI: Thinking Publications