IMAGINATION INCORPORATED!

The importance of story telling lies not only in the story, but in the time spent deepening the bond between parent and child. In the magical world of reading to your child, your presence encompasses his world as he follows the magical thread of the narrative. When you speak, sing or tell a story in the daily dialogue of mediating, instructing, managing, informing and expressing your love, you create stepping-stones for your child into his or her future. Studies of feral children show that in the absence of human conversation and touch, the brain of the infant will not develop to its full potential, because without human conversation and protection no child can thrive. When you tell a story, you tell your child about the world and its demands, its realities, its delights. Stories use the narrative format because this is how children organise their experience; magical tales, like dreams, use symbolic language in a succession of images. Stories for children mingle the fantastic and the ordinary; they tell of crises, difficulties, loss, trauma, neglect, abuse or abandonment exactly because every child knows how she, or he, will face the challenges that must be encountered in growing up. Magical stories are always told in a form that is safe for the child to hear and allows the imagination to roam because this is ‘just a story’. Enchanted by the flow the child can maintain a balance between the ordinary and the fantastic; he can shore up confidence and know that he will cope with the challenges that must be faced at some time in his mysterious future. Every word provides your child with images of meaning and success as he or she learns to be imaginative, socialised, intelligent and co-operative. Stories nurture the child’s need to feel competent, capable and worthy. All constructive magical tales provide options, choices and a means of identifying with the hero or heroine - and propel the child’s imagination to the outer edges of possibility. The child identifies with the noblest character in the story and decides not to be like the ignoble, lesser characters. He interprets for himself how others who are like him in significant ways react to the events of their lives. It is exactly the sequence of events in the hero’s situation that alerts the child to options unseen by adults. Your child will use your voice as a lifeline to stay connected to his or her experience of him or herself as ‘Me!’ One fine day - unexpectedly! - your child will refer to herself as ‘Me’ or ‘I’, and possessions and things as ‘Mine!’ Individual consciousness has begun to blossom and your child has outgrown the phase of symbiosis, of being an attachment, an appendage. The competitive ‘Mine!’ of the toddler begins when his sense of belonging to this world, and owning objects in it, starts to flourish! These are the necessary milestones of his or her ability to think through what belongs to ‘Me-as-a-Self-Named-Me’; those things called ‘mine’ that are adjuncts to his or her personal identity. Your child is now ready to listen to stories of magic! Once individual consciousness has arrived and the thinking processes are more concrete, the child understands that he has control over his life. The child knows that how she exercises control is her personal responsibility, and understands that each person must decide for herself who she wants to be. Bruno Bettelheim, Child Psychiatrist and Concentration Camp Survivor, suggests in his book ‘Uses of Enchantment’ that fairy tales address many levels of human experience - loss, separation, abandonment, ambiguity and neglect - and in listening to the tale the fascinated child learns ‘to live with such complexity as his life offers.’ The story itself sets the inner, imaginative life in motion. The child is now able to imagine that he can slay the dragon! She knows that she can captivate the Prince! The solution, apparently magical, lessens fear and grants hope. The magical tale is the right medium for the child because he or she can allow the imagination to venture into the wider world in which it would not be dangerous to see oneself in the same situation as the heroic character. Traditional tales depict the central character’s dilemma and show how his personal freedom is in some way constricted or forbidden. He is captive, alone, treated unkindly and unable to manage tasks set out before him. Other characters in the story control his life and his circumstances. This prohibition against taking control of his own life is a significant marker of the hero.