Telling stories: Be known by your child in a way others will never know you.

From Psychology Today

June 12, 2025 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Even beyond recognizing the known benefits, many fathers cherish the opportunity to read stories to their children. Nighttime reading rituals allow fathers and their children to share worlds that can include everything from elephants and pigs to dinosaurs, demons, and dark knights. Most fathers are even seduced into “one more story” before lights are out and the “I need water” torture begins.

Fathers Telling Their Own Stories

A father who shares glimpses of his own story over the course of his child’s growing years offers a special gift.

It is an opportunity to be known by your child in a way that others may never know you. It is an opportunity to make your child an insider whose own story is now expanded by yours.

What Kids Learn From Hearing Family Stories

Elaine Reese (2013), who discusses “What Kids Learn from Hearing Family Stories” in the Atlantic, reports that preschool children whose parents were guided to reminisce with stories, were able to tell a richer narrative with more details than children whose parents were not guided to reminisce. Preteens from families that collaboratively shared daily events and family history were found to have stronger self-esteem, self-concepts, knowledge of family events, coping skills, and less anxiety and depression that those without the opportunity.

Renowned pediatrician, D.T. Winnicott, author of The Child, The Family and the Outside World, maintained that mothers provided children with the inside emotional story and fathers, the outside world story. As such, personal sharing may have been more likely from mothers. While we have moved beyond that gender stereotype, it is worth reminding fathers that their own inside story is invaluable to their children.

The Story the Child Hears

Children only know their parents as adults. Accordingly, they are intrigued by the very thought that their parent was once a little person like them–Someone who had a best friend, a favorite food, a favorite toy, the same allergy, a big sister, a team that went to the finals, a team that lost every game, a piano teacher they hated, no one to play with, summers at grandma’s, hated chores, a new school, a new friend, a lost basketball……

In his book, The Storytelling Animal-How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall (2013) tells us that when we hear a story – we co-create it. We picture in our own mind our own version of what is happening – the setting, the sounds, the people. We are moved emotionally with delight, dread and expectation of what will happen as it unfolds – and we remember it. Unlike other facts, as humans we are pre-disposed to remember stories. When we add the emotional significance of parents, it is not surprising that children remember every detail of their parents’ stories.

When Others Tell Your Story

Sometimes whether requested or not, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends feel compelled to tell pieces of your story.

“ Do you know what book your Dad wanted me to read over and over every night?”

“Do you know that when your Dad was 7 and I was 5, he so was mad that I had the chocolate cone- he dropped his ice cream cone on my head!”

“Did you hear the story of your Dad’s scoring the winning basket in the final High School Playoff Game?”

When your story is opened, don’t close it. – Share your version. Most kids want to know all the pieces and they want your input, “ Dad…Did that really happen?”

What About the Pain and Trauma in Your Story?

Your child’s learning about pain and suffering in your life may be one of the most important aspects of the life stories that you share. Notwithstanding sensitivity to age and what a child can grasp, your child will come to know what you have faced and how you survived.

Many have had fathers or grandfathers who served in the military and whose story was hardly shared or shared in great detail. Often it makes sense of their pain as well as their pride for the country.

We know from the impact of intergenerational trauma that secrets can distance us from loved ones and what is not said, but acted upon, bewilders and impacts children.

Elaine Cooper, LCSW, clinician and author of the book, Let's All Hold Hands and Drop Dead: Three Generations, One Story, shares that it was only when her father gave her the written version of his story of the Holocaust that her father’s emotions and behavior made sense to her. She reports that tragically in the case of her brothers, whose emotional suffering was apparent, and personally for her, it would have made such a difference in her relationship with her father and her childhood family experience—if she had known.

Your Child’s Favorite Story of You

Father’s Day is a great time for a father or grandfather to not only tell a story but to ask for their child, teen, or adult child’s favorite story about them. It often offers a perspective a dad would never expect.

Honoring Fathers That Have Died

In face of the realities of terrorism, war, gun violence, illness, and accidents, too many fathers are lost to their families and those who love them. Their stories are very important to their children. Told by grandparents, siblings, and friends, their stories are a gift to a 7-year-old, a 17-year-old, or a 37-year-old. They offer a memory, a personal glimpse, of their father to embrace and carry in life.

We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Celebrate being a father.

Give your children the gift of your story.