Tell me a story...

Children for centuries have made that simple request.

And by all parents means the truest thing to do is they honor that adorable tiny one’s desire to hear words that have been written by wonderful children’s books authors and so we read those memorable words for the ages…and feel we have completed a job well done… but what if..

Although, as much as we love to conquer the idealistic world of kiddie-lit, ( here’s a site: http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/kiddie-lit )and bring home that knowledge of what each and every child’s future teachers would prefer for them to have under their proverbial belts when they enter pre-school here’s an out of the box concept… make up a story with them front and center as the main character and ask them for their input and ideas to sallying forth with a plot and development of a backgrounds for each and every included participant in the tale; crazy?

Who knows but there are books out there that now do make your child the star. I know that I have heard of this before.

But my question to any of you is the plot also original or do they just add your little one’s name in place of the original cast of characters?

Sure it’s a long shot that your brilliant small selfie will want to cooperate and if not, you start the ball rolling, but always remember to try and make it from their point of view and true life experiences, they are yours so this should be easy and if not… well, maybe you better get to know them better and then start all over.

Making stuff up for publication is best when you start with things you know of personally; at least that is what many professional writers say… but authors have imagination and do research for legitimacy or have reliable sources to give their works occasional reality, but not always. Poetic license has been known to run rampant in many of a creative tale from a child’s mind…

Now to get started with your mini you, you might let them try an imaginative sentence of what they did for the day…

“I went over to play with Timmy today and we had a great time until…yep, Richard, his big brother took back one of his trucks saying it was his!”

Now a good parent might ask, “How did that make you feel?” Yep, parenting is not that different from being a therapist, ha! Any-who, feelings are also how a writer writes to express a situation’s relevance for what might occur in a future chapter or scene plot development, huh, got it?

So emotions are important to express.

Most children understand happy or sad or angry or mad or funny or sick or scared or brave, you get the idea… but don’t put words in their mouth, listen!

If all else fails with this idea and it very well might; think of it this way you had another bonding moment with that child and you really tried hard to understand their way of thinking like all good parents should anyway!

They are, after all, little people.

What brought this on, one might ask.

And I am very happy you did, even if you really didn’t.

Well, I will tell you anyway…

Our grown man of a son, number one who is in his fourth decade of his life, called today to say that he was coming for a visit and to deliver a workbench he had asked Hubby, his Dad if he wanted and the answer had been yes.

Wonderful ploy to see the boy!

Kidding, Hubby said yes because he did want it.

But I am happy that he had.

And so he will enter into our somewhat confusing day of, maybe pool time, weather permitting, independent exercise, and off to lunch where he will have some input and then we will have time to catch up during that meal and after and then he will be off to his home two and a half hours away, again…sad to even think about it even now…

I did manage to have the weather cooperate today for my two half hour sets and I did try again with some yellow band exercises and deep-end ladder ones too and even those Styrofoam spongy water weights, but I did not put them under the water, too heavy still and painful, and yes, I am listening to my body, thank you very much!

On that note of now you know too, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all those overages with you who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

PS My writing ability did not start until I was a girl of twelve years old, and a babysitter at that time. I had some difficult children to sit for and then I found the best way for them to see the errs of their ways was to make up stories with their misbehavior in them and they saw themselves and it had worked, they were wonderful from then on… mostly! Later that year in seventh grade I wrote my first play about a candy store robbery called, “Sweet Job” and for that I received my first, “A” in writing and I was hooked.