Story: An Aid to Positive Child Development

This theoretical paper highlights how story plays a multi-faceted positive role on the developmental process of the child. Listening, reading and writing stories foster child's perception, memory, thinking, language, intelligence, feeling and emotion. Piaget and Kolhberg have used story to find out the aspects of moral development. Through stories the child also learns to communicate effectively and strengthens interpersonal relationships. By listening and reading stories about great personalities, the child involves in role-taking behavior where he/she puts him/herself into another person's (role-model) position and imagines how that person thinks, feels and behaves. Stories are also used for therapeutic purposes for all age groups. Widely accepted projective tests, like Children's Apperception Test, Thematic Apperception Test, analyse an individual's personality through stories. There are many indigenous examples, where we find the relevance of story and parables in shaping the behavior of the child and the overall development of personality. Story, as an aid to positive child development, has a wide implication for the physical, psychological, social, moral and spiritual development, not only during childhood, but also its ripple-effect could be observed during later phases of life.