A "Hairy Pickle"??!! and other stories...

When my children were very young, on a silly day we were singing songs, and suddenly I came up with "I was walking through the park one day, in the merry merry month of May, when I thought I saw a nickel and it was a hairy pickle!!!"  And I got very silly about it and carried on about could you just imagine a hairy pickle standing there, and of course, being so young, my children all thought it was pretty hilarious.

"Hairy pickle" then became our little "funny" word whenever I wanted to make one of my children laugh.  If they were nervous at the doctor's office, or mad or sad about something, I would tell them that I could make them laugh... and then "hairy pickle" always brought a smile.

Also, my children loved stories.  When they asked me to tell them stories, I always pulled out a pretty demonstrative story about whatever it was they were going through at the time.  If they were not cooperating going to bed, the story about "Susie Sleepless" inspired them.  Susie Sleepless didn't want to take a nap, and then her mom said, "okay, then, Susie, NO SLEEPING..."  Although our stories were way more drawn out, simply put, Susie Sleepless began to fall asleep on the swings, and then in the sandbox, and even fell asleep while she was eating soup and her nose went into her soup!!! Finally she BEGGED her mom to let her go to sleep!  

Then there were the bunny family, that coincidentally had five bunnies in a den, and they learned all kinds of lessons that my children were awe-struck by, and which indirectly applied to things THEY needed to learn!

Challenge:  Get a "key word" or phrase that just makes your child(ren) giggle, and then use it to cheer them up when you need to!    Inspire them with stories about animals or things they love. Make the stories teach character lessons they can grow from!   As they listen wide-eyed to the stories, later you will have opportunities to remind them what happened to the little animals in the story...