Do I see you nodding a yes? My bedtime for sure starts with endless questions from my daughter. As if that is the most crucial time of the day for having a chat on anything and everything possible! From school related topics to lunch menu, petty fights, friends, recent books, outer space everything comes to her head ONLY once she hits the bed. Or atleast that’s how it feels.
Ofcourse I do love to listen to her heart-to-heart talks but how to curtail this marathon-like session? She does need to wake up next morning for school too. I feel quite bogged down frankly when the questions don’t seem to end. For one I am quite exhausted by that time and the last thing I like to do is to shut her down or lose my calm. I also look forward to spending that one hour after she sleeps-off reading a book, catching up with my husband or occasionally watching a movie.
About a year back I figured out how to work around this, infact I have turned that into an opportunity. We have a pact now. I let her choose any one topic of her choice and we weave a story around it so that she gets transported to an imaginary world which helps her drifts into sleep much quicker. Like one day we had picked up a Colgate tooth paste which had a Magical Space Exploration cut-outs. She was busy all evening, cutting different pieces, setting up the aliens, rovers, UFOs. So naturally she wanted to tell me a story around that. And here is how her story goes –
Oscar, the Magnetic Superhero
This is the year 3017 and Oscar, the chief astronaut at NASA has today landed on the planet Mars. He steps out of his spaceship with his 4 co-astronauts. They are here to bring back metal “GoogleX” which the earthlings need to power Google. Oscar’s men start packing the metal “GoogleX” into boxes when they notice a strong storm arising around them.
Oh no, a dozen aliens jump off the flying UFO and start moving towards their spaceship. Oscar and his men take out their superguns and fire at the aliens. One alien seems shot in his arm, well done. But Oh no, look he regrows his arm. They shoot him in his head, but Oh no, he regrows his head.
These aliens are very powerful. They are inching closer. They want to capture the spaceship. Oscar has to do something quick. But there seems to be no way to kill them. Oscars gets an idea, he rushes inside the spaceship and brings out his huge life-size magnet. And it works. Dush, one alien. Dush second alien, Dush one by one all the aliens get attached to the magnet and hang there stuck on it it. Yeyyy, there it is, mission accomplished.
They attach the magnet to their spaceship and hurl into into outerspace on their way back to the Earth. Hail Oscar, hail the magnetic Superhero!
I am at times amazed at the kind of stories that come out. A kid’s imagination can really run far and wide. I also thoroughly enjoy her storytelling instead of me telling her one or reading her one. She gets transported to her imaginary world while weaving the story and slowly drifts off to sleep.
Do you enjoy your child’s storytelling? Do you wonder how imaginative they get at times? Are there specific triggers when their imagination comes out? Share with us in the comment box.
Image Credits : mumtips
This article was first publsihed here
An Urban Nomadic 