Before You Were Born Stories

A cosy storytelling habit in which a grown-up tells a short, true story from the family’s past and the child draws it, retells it, and adds it to a growing collection of “our stories.”

Choose a quiet moment — bedtime, a long car ride, a walk. Announce it the same way each time: “Do you want a Before You Were Born story?”
Tell one short, true story (2–3 minutes) with a beginning, middle, and end. Good topics: how the child got their name, where a grandparent grew up, the day the parents met, something naughty Mum did at age five, a time the family had a hard patch and got through it.
Add sensory details the child can picture — “Grandpa’s kitchen always smelled of onions” — and show a photo or an object if you have one.
Invite questions, then ask one back: “What part did you like best?” or “What would you have done?”
Next day, the child draws the story on one sheet of paper and tells it back while you write a sentence or two underneath in their words.
Keep the pages together in a folder or clip — the family story book. Re-read old ones on request.

Variation: hand the storyteller role to a grandparent, aunt, or family friend, in person or on a video call. Or tell the same event from two people’s memories and let the child spot what is different.

Requirements

Space: Anywhere quiet — bed, sofa, car, park bench
Surface: A table for the drawing step
Materials: None for the telling; paper, crayons, and a folder or clip for the story book; old photos or keepsakes are optional
Participants: 1 adult (or older relative) + 1 child; siblings can listen together
Supervision: Full adult participation — the adult is the storyteller

Rationale & Objective

Children build a sense of family membership largely through the stories they are told about it. Research from the Emory Family Narratives Lab (Fivush, Bohanek, and Duke) describes an “intergenerational self”: children who know stories about their parents’ and grandparents’ lives place themselves in something larger and longer-lasting than themselves. In their study using the “Do You Know?” scale, older children and adolescents who knew more family history showed higher self-esteem and better family functioning. That work is correlational and was done with older children, so it is not a promise — but the habit it points to is easy to start at five, when autobiographical memory and narrative skills are growing fast. Elaine Reese’s research on elaborative reminiscing shows that parents who tell and discuss detailed stories of the past have children with richer memories and stronger narrative skills. The activity serves the curriculum goals directly: the ELOF expects a child to “relate personal stories about being a part of different groups,” the UK EYFS asks children to talk about the lives of people around them and about the past, and both the EYLF and the Polish core curriculum tie a child’s developing identity to their family and its culture and values.

Progress Indicators

Early: listens for a minute or two; remembers one striking detail (“Grandpa fell in the pond!”); drawing is unrelated or needs heavy prompting
Developing: asks for a favourite story again, retells it with 2–3 events in roughly the right order, and can say who in the family it is about and how they are related
Proficient: retells several family stories with beginning, middle, and end; asks follow-up questions (“were you scared?”); links stories to self (“I have Grandma’s name”)
Advanced: tells a family story to someone outside the household, asks relatives for new stories unprompted, and uses “we” for the family across time (“we used to live by the sea”)

Safety Notes

Choose stories suited to a five-year-old — hard times are fine and valuable, but keep frightening detail out and end with how the family coped
Adoption, donor conception, estrangement, or loss can make “before you were born” a tender topic; tell the child’s real story in simple, honest words rather than avoiding the game
Do not quiz the child on facts afterwards — this is about connection, not a memory test
If stories about a person who has died bring on distress that does not settle with comfort, pause that thread and seek advice from the paediatrician or a child bereavement service

Hints

Playfulness: stories where the grown-up was small, silly, or in trouble are the all-time favourites. Use voices and act out the funny bits
Sustain interest: keep a running list on your phone of story seeds (“the lost shoe at the wedding”) so you never run dry; let the child request stories by title
Common mistake: telling only success stories. Families whose stories include setbacks and recoveries (“we had ups and downs, and we stuck together”) give children a more useful picture
Limited space: needs no materials at all — skip the drawing and simply ask the child to tell the story back to another relative the next day
Cross-domain: retelling builds narrative language and sequencing; “long ago / when I was little / now” builds time concepts; dictating the caption is early writing
Progression: adult tells, child listens → child picks the favourite part and draws it → child retells with the drawing → child asks a relative for a new story → child tells their own “when I was a baby” story to a younger child

Sources

Fivush, R., Bohanek, J.G. & Duke, M. (2008), “The intergenerational self: Subjective perspective and family history,” in F. Sani (Ed.), Self Continuity: Individual and Collective Perspectives
Duke, M.P., Lazarus, A. & Fivush, R. (2008), “Knowledge of family history as a clinically useful index of psychological well-being and prognosis: A brief report,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 45(2)
Reese, E. (2013), Tell Me a Story: Sharing Stories to Enrich Your Child’s World (Oxford University Press)
Head Start ELOF — Sense of Identity and Belonging (relates personal stories about being part of different groups)
UK EYFS — Understanding the World: Past and Present; People, Culture and Communities
EYLF (Belonging, Being & Becoming) — Outcome 1: children have a strong sense of identity