Tell Me a Family Story
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Description
At a quiet moment, an adult shares a real memory from their own childhood - a simple, age-appropriate story. The child listens, asks questions, or later asks for a favourite to be told again.
Play guide
- 1Choose a quiet moment - bedtime, after a meal, or a slow afternoon. Say something like "I want to tell you something that actually happened when I was small."
- 2Tell a simple, real memory. It doesn't need to be dramatic or important - small memories often land best with young children. ("When I was about your age, I found a frog in the garden and kept it in a box for one afternoon. My mother made me let it go.") Keep it brief: 2-3 minutes.
- 3After you finish, leave space. Your child may ask questions ("What did the frog look like?"), may want to share something similar, or may just be quiet. All of these are fine responses.
- 4If your child asks for the story to be told again - sometimes the same day, sometimes weeks later - tell it again, with the same basic facts. Repeated stories become family landmarks.
- 5Choose stories that are age-appropriate and simple. Heavy or difficult memories - grief, hardship - are not the material for this ritual with young children. Save those for when they ask.
Success signals
Your child asks follow-up questions during or after the story. Over time, your child requests specific stories by name ("tell me the frog one again"). The child begins to connect the adult's childhood self with the adult in front of them, noticing that you were once small too
If it's tricky
You can't think of a story: Start with something very small - a food you loved, a game you played, a place you walked to as a child. The story doesn't need to be interesting to adults; children find small ordinary details captivating. Your child doesn't engage: Try a different time of day or a different type of memory. Your child wants to tell their own story instead of listening: Let them, and come back to yours another night. Stories feel thin after a few sessions: Involve grandparents - in multi-generational households, grandparents often have richer childhood memories from different times and places that children find fascinating