This document provides guidelines for telling stories to children. It emphasizes that stories should be based on facts and teach positive lessons, as children will believe what they are told without distinguishing fiction from reality. Fantasies and fictional stories can hijack a child's mind and prevent them from seeking truth. Telling false stories could also encourage wrong behaviors through pretend play and undermine a child's understanding of the real world. Overall, stories should facilitate learning, build vocabulary, knowledge, and mental models based in reality to positively influence children's development.

1. HOW TO TELL A STORY TO
CHILDREN

2. Things to remember while
telling stories to children:
 Instill the right set of learnings:A child's
mind is very absorbent. It will start believing
in whatever is being fed to it, without the
filter of fact or fiction. Because of this kind of
indiscriminate absorbing, stories should be
based on facts and truths so that the child
does not imbibe the wrong set of learnings.
Otherwise such learnings become difficult to
undo later on.

3. Things to remember while
telling stories to children
 Prevent settling for fantasy than truth:
Fantasies and fictions are full of powerful visual
and mental imageries. A very young
impressionable mind is likely to find these
imageries so fascinating that they might get
hijacked by these rather than by the truth.They
might settle for the fantasy because the fantasy
is so captivating.The search for the truth could
get short-circuited.Therefore while telling
stories to children, fantasy must be avoided.

4.  Avoid encouraging wrong pretend-play: All
children reinforce their learnings by pretend-
play.This is natural and cannot be controlled.
When they start living out false stories, there
is likely to be a reinforcement of the wrong
set of values and principles, some of which
can be detrimental to later development.
Therefore, always tell stories to children that
are based on real life heroes and incidents so
they have the right role models.

5.  Remember, the effect of false stories cannot be
measured: Stories that are based on fantasies
and fiction are in the realm of the immeasurable.
So there will be several ways of interpreting it. It
will be difficult to pinpoint the exact nature of
what children have learnt because of exposure to
certain kinds of stories.This is likely to render
further building of knowledge tentative.
Therefore, while telling stories to children, avoid
horror stories and stories with themes that are in
the realm of "grey".

6.  Ensure that learning opportunities are not compromised:
Ensure that stories will facilitate the following learning
opportunities for children.
a. Children learn better by relating to real life experience.
Ensure that stories provide opportunities for children to
benefit from experiential learning.
b. Ensure that the stories help build children's vocabulary.
Stories have the power to instill the right usage of words, in
the right context. Besides, these contexts will be repeated
in real life, which will help reinforce the learnings from the
stories.
c. Ensure that the stories help build the children's repertoire
of knowledge, the kind of knowledge that will help them
build a better model of reality. Falsehoods and fictional
intelligence will not constitute intelligence.

7.  Encourage questioning: A child's mind is a
questioning mind.This curiosity will be
sufficiently satiated through the art of story
telling if it is based on reality. So ensure that
the stories open up the gateways for healthy
topics to continue the process of learning for
children.

8.  Don't upset the child's world: Children have
an inner sense of order and consistency.
When this contradicts with what they see
happening in the real world, their sense of
confidence in what they have learnt will be
rendered tentative.This is what will happen
when children hears stories that are never
played out in real life.Therefore always tell
stories that will reinforce the child's image of
reality.

9.  Build strong mental models: Children are
always building models of the real world and
live out their lives and interactions based on
these mental models. When a child bases his
mental model on false stories, his mental
model of the world will be wrong and so will
the child's interactions with the world.
Therefore ensure that the stories help
children cast scenarios where they can figure
out the dos and don'ts in a situation.

10. REMEMBER
 Story telling should have a positive effect on
the development process for a child. It should
not have mere entertainment value. It should
also have information and reality values.

11. THANK
YOU!