The very same romantic ideal – a yearning for love which culminates in happy ending- spans the spectrum of collective storytelling from Grimm Brothers to Walt Disney to Sex and the City.

The fairytale may be one of the most important cultural and social influences on children’s development. Who we become as adults, is largely influenced by the stories we were told. Though we teach young boys and girls to believe in happy endings, the question remains: how much faith is sufficient to sustain the fairytale’s suggested belief that someday, somewhere, a better world awaits? In the age of broken dreams and brush reality and so many examples of people who did not make it after all, what is our responsibility, if any, in telling a child what’s possible? What does the fairytale stand for? What can we learn from it?

The Fairy Grandmother(Cinderella):

Even miracles take a little time.

Happily Ever After:  A Postmodern Fixation or Reality?

On April 29^th  2011, the whole world stopped to witness the fairytale unfolding in front of their eyes: the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton. The bride, the cake, the Household Cavalry and the Duke, made the whole world stop in a breathless moment. The Royal wedding turned into a public holiday, a global celebration of romantic love. Sometimes, the real life writes the best copy.

However, romantic expectations of a contemporary woman who once-upon-a-time was a young girl dreaming of a knight in shining armor, not always end up in happy ending. Young Fiona in Shrek, the musical, ironically says: “A torturous existence, I don’t remember this part!”

One only needs to look at the feminist project focused around the critique against the model of a virtuous girl who’s forever waiting for a Prince Charming to come to her rescue and to feel like giving false promises to a child.

From a feminist criticism of the gender stereotype to a traditional interpretation of a moral virtue, what is it we can make of the magical storytelling? If we were to tell the children not to believe in happy endings as ways of protecting them from potential disappointments, wouldn’t we be crushing their dreams based on no evidence but our fearful projections?

Lesson in Faith or Reality Invented?

What fairytale  narrative provides is a magical experience for a child. It is one of the primary sources of meaning to child’s life and understanding of human behavior. Fairytales aim to project a vision of a better world. But what happens when life throws you a curve ball? What happens when great expectations turn out not to be so great?  “Cut the villains, cut the vamping/Cut this fairytale/Cut the peril and the pitfalls/Cut the puppet and the whale/Cut the monsters, cut the curses/Keep the intro, cut the verses/And the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting/ The waiting!” screams Fiona frustrated of waiting for her true love in Shrek, the musical.

Exposing children to fairytales in which the cruel and frightening scenes are edited or omitted would mean exposing them to only one side of reality. Lucia O., the main protagonist of my novel Letters to the Wind, in her search for “happily ever after”, mistakenly chooses a Dark Prince figure whose brusque and cruel treatment drives her deeper into despair. However, Lucia’s O. journey is also largely about self-reinvention and how despite love’s power to break her down again and again, she remains determined to piece her story back together and become the hero of her own narrative. And that’s what fairytale is all about.

In no success story, even the most fairylike, from Steve Jobs to Novak Djokovic, did the hero manage to escape dealing with obstacles on his way from rags-to-riches. Challenges the hero is exposed to offer a toolkit for riding the wave of life. Fairytales offer ways of resolving a stranglehold situation that at times may seem insurmountable and can inspire child to look beyond the limiting circumstances.

Thus, fairytales are nothing but lessons in  faith. Faith, that everything is possible.

After winning Wimbledon and becoming the world’s No.1, Novak Djokovic said:

There’s no end in dreaming: never give up on your dreams.

So take your chances. Become a hero of your own narrative. Maybe life is a fairytale, after all.

With Love,
Ksenija Pavlovic

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In primary schools, a large amount of curriculum time is dedicated to storytelling. We spend lots of time exploring and sharing books andwe recount trips and events, encouraging the children to write about what they know and based on real experiences.We also teach children to imagine scenarios, characters and events winding them into a coherent narrative. These tasks of character creation, setting description and plot development become common place in the primary classroom and yet, when I think about it, I realise what a difficult task we ask of them and how amazing and imaginative the fruits of their labours are. Faced with a blank page and charged with “writing a story”, I would undoubtedly struggle. So why is storytelling such an important part of education and child development?

Ben Okri, Birds of Heaven:

It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the mind and self. They become part of you while changing you.

Storytelling does not merely equip future Nobel Literature prize-winners but is an integral part of the all-round development of the child. Not only does it develop a child’s listening skills, develop their understanding of other communities through stories about others’ lives but stories are imperative to children developing identity and their understanding of their place in their family, community and the wider world. They are a vehicle for developing their personality and showing it to those around them. Stories are also way for children to work through problems and worries. Research has also shown ‘that those who told and heard stories at home under the age of four were the most likely to have ease and interest in learning to read once they got to school.¹‘

So how can you encourage your child’s storytelling abilities:

• Encourage imaginative play. Through gestures or movements of toys, children are enacting a story however much or little this is verbalised. Encourage them to talk through the sequence of events and model this for them by creating your own scenarios with them.
• Talk with your child. This will not only encourage their general language development and increase their vocabulary but you will prompt and model conversation and storytelling.  Enabling a conversation requires lots of listening from you, the adult. Talking about past and future events also promotes the idea of events happening over a period of time.
• Use sequencing cards for a familiar story. Get children to order and retell a well-known story.
• Read with your child. Your child’s reading ability will not be at the same level as their spoken language so encourage their vocabulary development and understanding of narrative structure by reading them stories. This should not replace their own reading but will provide them with a love of books and understanding of how stories work which will only benefit their reading development. Reading stories together also fuels their imagination and they may take on elements of the story to make up their own such as continuing the adventures of a character or using a similar setting.
• Tell your child stories about their past. Not only will this develop their understanding of stories and narratives but it will provide them with their own narrative within the family. These stories endure to adulthood even if the child was too young to maintain an actual memory of it. Their story within the family becomes constant and consistent which is so important in the development of their identity and children love to be the main character in any story.  Variety in styles and content is important to develop children’s understanding of language and narrative styles. Poetry and rhyme is always popular as children respond well to the rhythm of the language.
• Use prompts. Some children need more stimulation than others to trigger their imagination. Try to provide prompts which access all the senses which will really help their descriptive skills.Think about having a story sack or chest of items to fire the imagination. It’s much easier to imagine a scenario with an old boot in their hands which has perhaps been fished from the sea and bares the etched initials of a notorious pirate. Using dice such as these can also be an excellent way of providing a setting, character or problem to be incorporated into a story.

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/previews/7426-7450/sb7426-story-settings-dice-nets.html#.UsbMTfRdWmk

The importance of creativity and imagination in child development cannot be understated and this is not just modern thinking. Einstein himself believed so strongly in the education of the imagination and its role in progress that he recommended that children should be told fairy-tales:

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.²

We would love to hear your child’s favourite story and we also would love to read some of their own creative efforts.

1 http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/early-language-literacy/the-emergence-of-storytelling.html
2 http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/9810.Albert_Einstein

Featured image:  http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/3861-3870/sb3870.html#.Usa4r_RdWmk

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