‘Family stories form a real legacy you can pass along.’
In many homes, the tradition of parents reading bedtime stories is a regular occurrence. Well, this is one activity borrowed from the traditional family storytelling practice, ‘oral tradition.’ It is a modern-day version of family storytelling, if you will.
While there’s nothing wrong with reading bedtime stories, these are other people’s stories. Wouldn’t it be more fun and meaningful to share your family stories? That starts with building a family storytelling tradition.
What is Family Storytelling?
Storytelling is a way of communicating (or recording) life experiences.
In a family setting, storytelling involves sharing life journeys within the family, capturing the details of what happened, how it felt or affected the people involved, and why it happened or the meaning.
Family storytelling is a way families communicate their history through tales about people, events, places, and periods they lived.
While most of us rarely think about it, storytelling comes naturally to us, and we often do it during meals, leisure time, and family gatherings. However, it takes being intentional to capture these stories to avoid losing them in time.
Why Family Storytelling Matters in the Modern World
With the passing of the older generation, we lose an integral part of our family legacy. Unfortunately, family storytelling has become infrequent in today’s world.
Many influences from the environment threaten to discontinue this ritual.
Family separations: People are moving to different parts of the world for work.
Fragmented families: The older generations don’t live with younger ones, divorce and other issues fragment families.
Family history is lost and inaccessible in older formats such as tapes and others in unknown records.
These highlighted problems of the modern day are more reasons to revive the art of family storytelling.
Below, we look at the benefits of this tradition in families and their history.
The truth is storytelling goes beyond entertainment or a family bonding activity. It is how people preserve family memories and history.
- It is also a central element of parenting and teaching. When parents share stories at mealtimes, nap time, and during special occasions, they instill and reinforce lessons and warnings.
- There is a healing and closure component. Family stories and memories open avenues for healing and reconciling family members.
- Family storytelling builds identity. Children learn who they are and where they come from through family stories. Personal history helps them gain interest in their history and opens space to share family roots about their culture, ethnicities, traditions, and beliefs.
- Without these foundational identities, it is easy to lose themselves in a fast-evolving world, becoming everyone and nobody.
- Family storytelling is about family reminiscing. Talking about past experiences helps create a shared history among families and strengthens emotional bonds with children.
Overall, children benefit and become resilient and emotionally stable when they know simple things like where their grandparents come from or how their parents met.
How to Bring Family Storytelling to the Digital World
Family storytelling could use a modern twist.
By adapting storytelling to the digital age channels, you can easily turn treasured attic memories into shareable creations, like custom slideshows and photo books.
Not only will you preserve your loved ones’ legacies, but their stories will be passed down to future generations.
Simple Ways to Engage Family Storytelling at Home
As early as two years, you can start sharing your family stories with your kids using various channels.
- Share stories from your childhood with your mouth. These can be the first day of school, high school escapades, or even trips to your grandmother.
- During family visits, talk to your relatives about family stories. You will be surprised at how much of your history you and the children can gather from simple conversations.
- Incorporate family storytelling into your holiday and special occasions traditions.
- Build a digitised family and personal history. Start with old photos, videos, voicemail messages, and interviews by organising them into family stories complete with themes and digitise them using a storytelling app.
