- My parents were journalists and would coax older generations to share stories during the holidays.
- This year, I'm starting the tradition of my kids interviewing their grandparents.
When I was growing up, holidays were all about storytelling. My journalist parents possessed a magical gift for coaxing stories out of the older generations. This year, I'm going to be intentional about building storytelling traditions with my own kids so they can learn about their Mexican and European family history.
My wife's family is quieter than my own family of origin, so it takes some effort to nudge elders to share memories — especially with Grandpa's TV blaring and an over-active poodle jumping on everyone. Here are some of the strategies I plan to use to get the stories flowing this year.
Plan ahead
The first thing I'll do is prep for the storytelling session. This might sound too much like homework, but it's nothing big. I'll just review favorite stories from the past, and decide which "greatest hits" I want to request. I may also make a mental list of questions to guide storytellers toward the most entertaining tales.
When you ask someone something broad like, "tell me about your childhood," people get overwhelmed and go blank. So I'll narrow down my questions, steering the grandparents to towards stories the children will be excited to hear. "We have a fifth grader and a pre-K student at the table. Do you remember when you were their age? What was school like for you?" These questions encourage the kids to be involved and ask their own follow-up questions.
Have photo albums ready to go
To get us started, I'll bring a phone or tablet with vintage photos organized in chronological order. When my mother-in-law, Genevieve, shared her immigration story with my daughter's third-grade class, we put together photos to depict her journey to America. We began with a photo of Genevieve and two of her sisters in a German refugee camp. I asked Genevieve to talk about the bicycle in the picture. She recalled that dozens of children had to share that one bicycle. This was a detail that young children could relate to.
In my digital album, I included a photo of an antique Mickey Mouse doll. This image prompted Genevieve to recall how her Mickey toy flew out of the window of a car when she first arrived in America. She never saw that toy again, but always remembered it. This story of loss was easier for children to grasp than the idea of becoming orphaned in the war. My kids will hear more of the serious details of the story as they get older.
The next image I included was of the mission in San Diego where Genevieve was raised by nuns. The specificity of the visuals — from the bicycle to Mickey to the low-slung white stucco buildings on a hill — brought Grandma's stories alive.
There will be hard stories that I need to navigate
I spoke to Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist with the Child Mind Institute, about how to approach disturbing material in stories. "There should be a whole arc of resilience in a story for children," he said. "You can say, 'I'm telling you this because it's a story of strength.'"
Indeed, Genevieve focused on her resilience when telling her own immigration story. When my children look at the photo of three beautiful girls in Germany, they see their own faces, their own strength. This is what I want to give my kids every holiday — precious stories that show them who they are, and where they came from.