The Four-Year-Old Storyteller

Before my grandson’s fourth birthday party on Saturday, I told my son-in-law, who was sitting next to me on the couch, how amazed I as at his child’s imagination: he makes up stories about everything. He replied, “He has quite a narrative ability, doesn’t he?” Earlier in the day Gus, the four-year-old, had asked me to play firetruck/doctor with him. He then proceeded to sit me down, tell me we were on our way to a serious fire, buckled me in, jumped into the truck (the same couch), and pretended he was driving, making appropriate screeching sounds along the way. He ‘pulled in’, told me to help him unload the hose, and then proceeded to douse the fire. In the process, he slid to a halt, and said he had injured both of his feet. We had to rush to the doctor’s office. I became the doc, though he directed me about what to do in that role. I thought to ‘x-ray’ his feet, which he later incorporated into another game, thrilled at the notion. I then taped up both feet at his urging, using ‘pretend tape, grandma’, and then we were off to another fire. Earlier we had played ‘space ship’, with much discussion about whether we would go to Mars or Pluto, and which was closer to the earth. He knew, though I, of course, had no idea. He described the ‘space ships’ and told me how to take off. I was in charge of the control tower on one trip, and a pilot on the other. We also discussed how we would get back to earth. “We’ll just take off!” he said with assurance and a huge smile. I often found myself wondering during this visit, whether ‘story telling’ is in the genes. When I was a little bit older than he is now, my mother enrolled me in a modern dance program. Within the first month I was creating stories for the kids to dance, though I don’t remember how the teacher discovered I could do such a thing. Maybe I just blurted out what I wanted to do, and assigned roles to the other kids, and she was wise enough to give me free reign. I can still remember that we were sea horses, and that we were bringing life to the plant life in the ocean. I was the lead sea horse, of course, and some of my classmates were plants, some elf-like sea horses. I don’t think I played these games before I was four, but I don’t really remember. I do know that my made up ‘games’ were just as detailed and involved as Gus’s are. I played with him for hours, and though exhausted by the end of the morning, was completely enthralled by the child’s vivid imagination. None of the kids I played with made up stories, though they were perfectly willing to enter the worlds I created. It seems to be the same for Gus. Will he become a writer? Who knows….But it sure is fun to play with him.