did your mum /dad tell you stories before bedtime?

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my mum did, and she didnt read from books she made up a serial about a grasshopper. i became so enchanted by it i couldnt wait til the next 'episode'.
now i am telling my wee boy a story at bedtime, and i find it much nicer to make them up as i go.

― donna (donna), Thursday, 27 March 2003 07:09 (twenty-three years ago)

my father molested me before bedtime. It's true. I have no children. For a reason. haha.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Thursday, 27 March 2003 07:13 (twenty-three years ago)

my dad used to read me stories from Ladybird books. apparently I knew the stories so well that I would notice if he had skipped pages or paragraphs.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 27 March 2003 11:50 (twenty-three years ago)

My dad used to tell me bizarre stories about radioastronomy things he learned at Jodrell Bank (I was terrified of black holes and what would happen to our Sun in the same way that most kids were scared of monsters - little kids don't understand the vast quantities of time involved, I thought our sun would nova, like, NEXT WEEK, rather than in a couple of billion years) and stories about Mr. Point, Mr. Line, Mr. Plane, Mr. Cube and Mr. Tesseract in an attempt to explain dimensional theory to me.

No wonder I grew up so weird...

― kate, Thursday, 27 March 2003 11:56 (twenty-three years ago)

all the time, i remember well my mum tucking me in and telling me all about the magical elves in the forest of philosophical secrets...

24 years old i was

(you wondered how long it would be before someone did this 'joke')

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 27 March 2003 12:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My Dad used to tell me stories that featured my stuffed toys. Little Ted's adventures on the moon was a favourite.

― chris (chris), Thursday, 27 March 2003 12:03 (twenty-three years ago)

It was very exciting on the moon. but sometimes I got a bit frightened.

― Little Ted, Thursday, 27 March 2003 12:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Aww. My mum made up a series of stories about the Sandpit People. They lived in a sandpit. (I come from a v creative family.)

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 27 March 2003 12:34 (twenty-three years ago)

how did you switch the computer on? that's for Little Ted, not Archel, obv.

Big Ted's submarine was a wicked story too. I wish I could remember them properly.

― chris (chris), Thursday, 27 March 2003 12:36 (twenty-three years ago)

The greatest five words known to humanity: Where. The. Wild. Things. Are.

Let the wild rumpus begin.

― SittingPretty (sittingpretty), Thursday, 27 March 2003 13:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, my dad used to make them up. One year around Thanksgiving he made up a story about a giant turkey. I woke up in the middle of the night shrieking that i had heard the turkey gobbling.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Thursday, 27 March 2003 13:46 (twenty-three years ago)

My dad used to tell the Town Mouse/Country Mouse story from memory, but he was very good at telling it. I don't remember many stories at night-time, he usually told it on Saturday mornings.

― Ronan (Ronan), Thursday, 27 March 2003 13:47 (twenty-three years ago)

My dad made them up too. One favorite was adapted from a children's book, but he told it from memory so many times that it gradually changed, and he made up sequels and stuff. This was Mr. Squash-it-all-Flat, which was about a big bear that would sit on the other animals' houses and squash them flatter than a pancake. I forget how the other animals get revenge though. Sorry.
The other ongoing series was about how my dad was 2 inches tall when he was a kid, and he would go on adventures with his brother Fred (note: my dad doesn't have a brother in real life). He lived in a shoebox under his parents' bed. The one I remember involved going on a plane and him accidently falling into the airplane toilet, being frozen in the blue ice, and flushed out the bottom of the plane.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Thursday, 27 March 2003 13:55 (twenty-three years ago)

I was a k-precocious reader and was reading Lord Of The Rings at 6 but I still wanted my bedtime stories so I used to get my Dad to read the same chapter over and over again ("A Short Cut To Mushrooms"). I can't remember why. It drove him mental.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 27 March 2003 13:57 (twenty-three years ago)

I always got bible stories or mother goose. And sometimes my mom would sing hymns to me until I fell asleep.

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Thursday, 27 March 2003 14:14 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom in a Calvin-style "Hamster Hooey and the Gooey Kablooie" scenario shockah!

For a few years in the late seventies, my dad would read some bits of a children's Bible to me while I in turn would read him stories from a book of goofy sports anecdotes. Good fun. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 March 2003 15:36 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't remember ever getting any of this. Perhaps my mother couldn't find any children's story books with the moral "You're worthless and no one will ever like you".

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 27 March 2003 18:24 (twenty-three years ago)

martin, your mother sounds like the ma-from-hell. i just cant get my head around how any mother could be so horrible to her child.

― donna (donna), Thursday, 27 March 2003 19:02 (twenty-three years ago)

I was, as she has pointed out, a disappointment to her from the day she had me, and I always will be. The day she had me: I was adopted, and within two months I almost died twice - once from double pneumonia, once from my first big asthma attack. Turned out she couldn't take me back and get a working model instead.

To be fair, many parents abuse their children in all kinds of horrible ways, so this should be kept in some kind of perspective.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 27 March 2003 19:49 (twenty-three years ago)

And many parents don't... If I could Martin, I'd go back and give little M. a hug.

― luna (luna.c), Thursday, 27 March 2003 19:51 (twenty-three years ago)

I knew how to read by the time I was a year and a half old. My parents tried to read me bedtime stories and I would snatch the books out of their hands and read them aloud by myself.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 27 March 2003 19:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Allegedly this was why my mom stopped reading to me. She was skipping over parts in Paddington stories and I kept demanding they be read.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 27 March 2003 19:55 (twenty-three years ago)

We had a particular genre of stories for bedtime. "Pretend Stories." No joke. The implications of so naming stories seem rather amusing in retrospect.

― -M, Thursday, 27 March 2003 20:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Ha, me too JBR. I also had the experience similar to Kate's except it was my dad explaining carbon chains and other basic biochemistry things to me. He's awesome.

― teeny (teeny), Thursday, 27 March 2003 20:18 (twenty-three years ago)

yep my mum just to read to us, we didn't let her stop. My grandad made up these stories about two squirrels called Jimmy and Joey, they were pretty ace.

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 27 March 2003 20:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Thank you Luna and Donna - the good feelings now act like a hug.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 27 March 2003 20:38 (twenty-three years ago)

My father announced one night that for the rest of his life everything he said was going to rhyme. Me and my sisters liked it to start with but after a while it got on our nerves and even when we started crying and pleading with him to stop, he kept saying things like: 'Don't get mad/At your rhyming old Dad'.

― estela, Thursday, 27 March 2003 21:42 (twenty-three years ago)

And that was the day that estela's dad invented hip-hop.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Thursday, 27 March 2003 21:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Estela's dad is classic. I aspire to be a father like that.

My dad taught me about number bases (and, as a side-effect, multiplication and exponents) when I was 5 or 6, I don't remember exactly when. Mom was the big reader.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 27 March 2003 21:52 (twenty-three years ago)

they were too busy fighting. the old story. so, the portable radio and mono earplug did the trick. i also kept an antfarm at the end of my bed and would tell the ants stories. man, that sounds lame.

― kephm, Thursday, 27 March 2003 22:05 (twenty-three years ago)

My Dad used to make up these stories about a boy wizard called Harry who got into all sorts of magikal adventures.

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Thursday, 27 March 2003 22:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Can't actually recall my parents actively reading to me. I was apparently reading huge books the size of psychology manuals by age 3 (so I was told). Once they saw I could do that and occupy myself, they bought me some of those massive books like the "Big Golden Treasure Book of Fairy Tales" and left me to it.

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Thursday, 27 March 2003 22:39 (twenty-three years ago)

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