Lately, my son has been obsessed with asking us to tell him stories. At first, I eagerly jumped on every opportunity to do so, but now I just find it tiresome. At the same time, I can't really say no to him, right? After all, he's not doing anything wrong, and stories are healthy for his brain. Or are they?

Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that, in fact, it is fine for me to tell him no. After all, there can definitely be too much of a good thing. It can, I think, become a destructive behavior. But rather than telling him a plain no, I'll see if I can pivot the request by asking him to play along in coming up with a story. We used to do that a lot before—engaging in play with his toys and acting out a story together. When I'm the one telling a story, he's hardly participating, and his constant requests make me feel like a TV—one that doesn't have much time to rally its imagination and prepare the next tale.

Don't get me wrong. I love telling him stories. Some of the most magical and personal moments we've had together have been during storytelling. His eyes entirely affixed on my expressions (I like to act out characters), his slack jaw, his smile when there is comedy, his surprise and astonishment at the appropriate story beats. Sometimes he enjoys a story so much that he keeps on acting it out and talking about it for days on end! I really like when that happens because it gives me a chance to deepen the story; spin up more tales of the same characters or the same universe.

But, I think, in my current state as a storyteller I have trouble just conjuring one on demand, out of thin air, especially one after the other. I've noticed that when I'm not inspired what usually comes out is some slop about a forest animal going to have dinner at another's animal house and forgetting to bring the teapot or some such. He seems to enjoy these as well, but I don't see the same emotion and wonder in his face that he gets with a real story, nor do I enjoy telling them as much.

Something else I've considered — and I think I will do — is stocking up on short tales for kids. Read them, digest them, and then tell them. I imagine most great storytellers¹ know a bunch of stories that they did not invent themselves, and they become masterful in their telling.

Not so long ago, for some reason I can't remember, I was reading about the path of the bard in Druidry. According to the site linked above², a huge part of becoming a bard was memorizing and learning to recite stories:

In the first year, the student progressed from Principle Beginner (Ollaire) to Poet’s Attendant (Tamhan) to Apprentice Satirisist (Drisac). During this time they had to learn the basics of the bardic arts: grammar, twenty stories and the Ogham tree-alphabet.

Over the next four years, they learnt a further ten stories each year, a hundred ogham combinations, a dozen philosophy lessons, and an unspecified number of poems. They also studied dipthongal combinations, the Law of Privileges and the uses of grammar.

By their sixth year the student, if they had stayed the course, was called a Pillar (Cli) and would study a further forty-eight poems and twenty more stories. Over the following three years, they were termed a Noble Stream (Anruth) because ‘a stream of pleasing praise issues from him, and a stream of wealth to him’. During this time they learnt a further 95 tales, bringing their repertoire up to 175 stories. They studied prosody, glosses, prophetic invocation, the styles of poetic composition, specific poetic forms, and the place-name stories of Ireland.

The final three years of their training entitled them to become an Ollamh, or Doctor of Poetry. In their tenth year the student had studied further poetic forms and composition, in their eleventh year 100 poems, and in their twelfth year 120 orations and the four arts of poetry. He or she was now the Master or Mistress of 350 stories in all.

~ quoted from Bard | What is a Bard? | Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids

Ten stories a year! That isn't really that much if you think about it. Though I guess it depends on the length of the stories. I like to think a good chunk of this time was dedicated to learning to tell the stories rather than just memorizing their content. After all, the telling is what makes a story great.

Anyway... got off on a tangent there.

I think stories ARE important for both of us. They help create a sort of shared world, ideas, and values. The other day, after I refused to tell another story to my son. He asked me why and I surprised myself by answering something which I intuitively know to be true but have never realized:

Do you know where stories live? Once I tell them to you they go into your heart, and there they put down roots and grow like a tree throughout your whole body. In so doing they change you from within and help you grow. If I tell you too many stories in a row then they will all be pressed together with hardly any room! We need to respect them and give them the space they need to mature and enrich us.

(paraphrased)

I doubt he got the whole meaning of this, and he was probably confused about the idea of stories putting down roots like a tree. But it is true! Stories do change us from within and help us grow, and we need to give them the time and space they need to do this.

Mass consuming them³ kills their magic.

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Footnotes

1. In my head, the greatest of them all is Skarpi from Patrick Rothfuss' The Kingkiller Chronicle. ↩

2. I can't vouch for the accurateness of that link's content as I have little knowledge about it myself. ↩

3. For us adults the same thing happens. When you binge watch a show you don't give time for the individual episodes to grow within you. I won't even say anything about social media. ↩