Dad Hack: Freestyle Bedtime Stories

Volume 3, Issue 13

Bedtime with a toddler involves, to put it colloquially, a bunch of fuckery. Parents of toddlers make infinite tiny compromises - cursory tooth brushing, mismatched pajamas, perfunctory face wiping - between the dinner table and the mattress, most of which are intended to minimize the drama inherent in wrestling an overtired imp into slumber.

Toddlers also are notorious for their insatiable yearning for bedtime stories. In the popular children’s book Olivia, whole pages are dedicated to the tense negotiations between child and parent over just how many books is enough.

Today’s DAD HACK involves a subtle, but effective, reframing of the bedtime story ritual, which I have found to be quite successful. It requires SLIGHTLY more creativity than just picking a book off the shelf, but not much.

Dad Hack #7: Freestyle Bedtime Stories

The basic idea is simple: just tell a made up story off the top of the dome. It’s sort of like freestyle rapping, except instead of endeavoring to wreck another MC in 16 bars, you’re trying to get your little bridge troll to fall asleep in under 15 minutes.

I use three separate, lazy techniques for this Dad Hack; hopefully at least one of them is calibrated your level of comfort with just making shit up. Ranked in order from easiest to hardest:

1. Just Talk About the Day: as I mentioned in my review of the book Some Babies, that whole book is just a mom talking in extraordinary detail about what happened during her baby’s regular-ass day. You too can describe the day your kid had in painstaking detail! Be sure to really take your time unspooling this, and be sure to leave no small bit to the imagination. I talk VERY slowly and say things like, “Then, dada got up from the baby chair, scratched his head, sighed, and wiped ALL OF THE YOGURT off of the dog.” Stuff like that. Little kids are egomaniacs, so they love hearing stories about stuff they actually did IRL.

2. Change the Animals/Characters in a Known Story: remixing existing narratives is cheap, easy, and, in keeping with the tenor of this strategy, lazy. Last night, for example, I told my daughter a COMPLETELY ORIGINAL story about a tiger named Sam who wandered around the savannah knocking down the raggedy grass dwellings of frustrated antelopes. This was, of course, a retelling of the “Three Little Pigs,” a story I’m sure you know. Just change the animals, new story, boom.

3. Build a World: this approach requires a little more creativity, but I’m confident that you can do it. In this approach, you create a little world that you can revisit and build upon. Loyal readers know that Azad’s favorite stuffy is a monkey she calls, “Bapi,” and in our secret bedtime story world, there’s a whole island of Bapis, whose leadership is in the throes of complex multi-lateral treaty negotiations with some whales, a group of unicorns that used to be horses, and my brother-in-law, “Uncle Mitch.” The world of Bapi Island is weird, rife with inconsistencies, and embarrassing to explain in too much detail. And the toddler fucking loves it!

The key here is just to just say a lot of stuff, slowly, with rambling details - “Then the red horse walked over the the green horse, who was in the middle of a conversation with the blue horse …” - and in a way that lulls the kid into slumber.

I love books, DON’T GET ME WRONG. But I find myself reaching for this technique in lieu of books at least a couple of nights per week. Give it a try and let us know how it goes!