How To Use Stories To Build Closer Families

A 10-second post can go viral and still vanish from your memory. A well-told story can stick for decades and it can shape the way your child sees themselves. We sit down with professional storyteller and Moth host Corey Rosen to talk about how family storytelling builds connection, empathy, and the kind of resilience kids can lean on when life gets messy. 

Corey shares improv-based bedtime story games like Word At A Time and shared fake memories, plus a hilarious truth parents will appreciate

About Corey Rosen: Corey Rosen is a writer, actor, and storytelling coach whose work spans live performance, publishing, and entertainment. He has performed and hosted with The Moth and is the author of Your Story, Well Told (Mango Publishing, 2021) and A Story for Everything (Turner Publishing, 2025). His entertainment background includes work with companies such as Jim Henson Productions, Comedy Central, and Lucasfilm, contributing to projects across film, television, and themed entertainment.  To learn more, visit his website: https://www.yourstorywelltold.com/

Transcript

Why Stories Matter In Families

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Legit Parenting, where we ditch the social media perfect parent advice and talk about what really happens and matters in the trenches of parenthood and family life. I'm Craig Nippenberg, father of four, grandfather of two, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and family therapist with over 40 years of experience helping parents understand how their kids' brains work. Through my books, private practice, and consulting work, I've developed practical strategies that help real parents navigate the tough stuff and build resilient kids. With me is Sidney Moreau, producer, and your tell it like is mom friend, who's living proof that hot mess mom isn't a stereotype. It's a survival strategy and proof that it's okay. No judgment, no pretending, just real talk from a mom who gets it. Whether you're struggling with school drop-offs, navigating social media drawlers, trying to hold your marriage together, dealing with a divorce, or raising a kid who doesn't fit the bowl, you're in the right place. This is Legit Parenting, where we keep it real and remind you, just relax. You only need to be this side of good enough. Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, Craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, Sidney Moreau, who's been on spring break, and kids are back, and I'm sure you've been busy as can be. Lots of fun activities, I hope. It's been fun. It's always the parent juggle. Trying to manage everything working. Yeah. That's the tough one. Oh, you should be in Mexico right now, right? Why am I not?

SPEAKER_02 1:36

I am supposed to be in Hawaii, Craig. Yeah. Just kidding.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

That would be awesome. All right. Today is a special edition for legit parenting, and it's on storytelling with your family. And I just love it. Now, first a little backstory in human history. So the first humans for thousands tens of thousands of years passed on their experiences, their knowledge, and their understanding of the universe and what our place was in it, i.e., the beginnings of religion. And they did it through storytelling. That's how they passed it on. And somewhere along the line, people started drawing pictures on caves. And here in Colorado, we have many different places with petroglyphs that you can hike up to and see what the Native Americans were trying to tell the story with their petroglyphs. And then the first alphabets started. And the original ones were based on nature. So a T stood for a tree. And a big and an O was like a rock. And an M was mountains. So they developed simple alphabet symbols based on nature. And they continued to do that, and that evolved. And finally into written stories. And I had on a personal note I grew up in Missouri, Lutheran church was just on the street every Sunday morning, Sunday school. And my favorite part of Sunday school was hearing the stories, especially from the Torah or the Old Testament of Jericho and the walls falling down. And just it was like so action and adventure. It was just so awesome. And when my son was young, he's 32 now, but some of you parents might remember the fabulous show called Veggie Tales. And there would be those old biblical stories acted out by the Veggie characters. I still remember the Walls of Jericho when the little peas were the guards up in the castle, and they're like, you silly pickle, and then the walls tumble down, and oh, just fun. So I want you as a parent right now to think about what stories shaped you, books or stories you've heard from your ancestors, and what stories your kids are into now. So my son at 32, and some of you parents out there will relate to this, it was Harry Potter. The whole country, the whole world was consumed by Harry Potter. And on my son's sixth birthday, on that day was the opening of the first movie. And it was a fundraiser for the Learning Disabilities Association, which I was involved with, and the tickets were $100 each. So I'm like, okay, you can bite me and mom and one of the friends. That's it. And then the next year we saw it on his birthday again, the second episode came out again on the uh November 16th. And then I just had to pay 20 bucks, and we took a bunch of his buddies. Now, on a sad note, so much of our world today is transmitted in 10 seconds social media posts, which aren't really great stories. And not many of them, you might share them. I saw a funny one yesterday, you might share them with a few friends, but do those really last in your memory? If I asked you what's a social media post that really resonated with you and you've remembered for the last 10 years, I can't think of one. They don't stick, they're not there for us. So for that reason, I'm bringing on a professional storyteller, Corey Rosen, whose newest book is called A Story for Everything: Mastering Diverse Storytelling for Any Occasion. So, Corey, welcome. And I my first question: how does one become a

From Cave Art To Social Media

SPEAKER_03 5:40

professional storyteller?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Well, it's not that hard, Craig. It just involves telling stories. I think what you said, we need to do, we need to hearken back to our origins and our roots and find and tell our stories. And when we do that, when we revisit and reclaim who we are, whether it's our own stories or like you were saying, the stories of our heritage, of our, of who, where we came from, of our ancestors, of our religious forebearers, whatever those are, getting in touch with who we are as people and communicating those through the lens, as I like to say, the lens of stories makes you a better storyteller. And it's something that I believe we all have inside of all of us. I think that everybody to some degree identifies as a storyteller. We're always telling stories.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

And from a little bit of the analysis of it and study of how we tell our stories, how other people tell stories, it's something we can get better at and we could be more effective at, so that maybe people watch our social media posts for longer than 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

Let's hope. And your book has tons of exercises and ideas on how to do it. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

But lots of stories.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

Yes. The instant connection I had, too. I'll tell you the first one. I was in Iceland with my son a couple of summers ago, and we were at the campground. And there they have these campgrounds, and then they have a building to cook in, and you can get a order of beers. It's fabulous, and showers and everything. And I had gone over the building with a book, and I was just sitting there reading, putting my feet up, uh having a beer. And there was this woman, maybe 40, 35, sitting close. She came over and was sitting close by, and we started chit-chatting, and she said she was a professional storyteller. And she she was from Romania. And she goes all over Europe telling stories. And I'm assuming it's at the local library. I wasn't sure, but that's how she makes her living. And she asked me if I wanted to share a story with her. Well, tomorrow let's meet and I will tell you one about Columbine High School. And we talked for an hour, and I was in tears talking about being a mental health first responder at the high school and working with all those kids. So I don't know. I've never had contact with her again, but perhaps that story has been shared and the trauma of all of that.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

I don't know that particular person, but something that you just said really lit me up, which is, I think, something that I identify and I really relate to, which is that you met somebody who identified as a storyteller, and it sounds like one of the first things that she did is she asked you to tell her a story. Yeah. And this is something that I try to encourage people to do that want to be better storytellers. Step one is be a story listener. Listen to people telling their stories. Notice how people tell their stories, encourage others to tell their stories. When they do, what happens is it lights us up, it lights our brains up, it lights our connection, our empathy in ways that all of a sudden bring out and evoke other stories that we've got. So it's not that you have to be quote unquote interesting. You don't have to have this collection of fascinating things that have happened in your life. Rather, listen to others. Encourage others to share their experiences, their lives and their own. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

You collect their stories and then maybe respond with one of yours that resonates with the emotions of the other person.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Doing that. When we start swapping stories in those ways, we really connect as humans. We're not just tit-for-tatting. We're not just sharing. I did this. Oh yeah, I did this. We're listening, we're opening ourselves up, and it actually makes you a better storyteller by being a better story listener.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Yeah. I I just had a flashback to being in the island of Crete back in the 80s. And I had a little motorbike and I was going around the to the villages. And I always like to visit cemeteries and see what each kind of culture, how they handle their cemeteries. And it was a very brief story. And I saw this old man by a stone, and I came up and he turned to me and he simply said, Mama. That's it. It was he was there for his mother. And then he ended up taking me into town and meeting the old guys, and they were playing checkers and drinking oozo and coffee. And I got to hang out. And none of them spoke English at all. Not not a lick, but it was so delightful. It was but it was a two-word story.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

And good for you for opening yourself up to that kind of experience and adventure. I think there's a lot of people who would be nervous, would be afraid to follow somebody else, a stranger into their life or into their world. Yeah. Which actually reminds me of a story. Yeah. When I was traveling, I was in my 20s and I went to Southeast Asia by myself. I was solo backpacking around

Meeting A Professional Storyteller

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Asia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and parts of Thailand. And one day I was tired and I was at my hotel where I was staying, and I came outside, and the same man who had dropped me off on his motorcycle, his little moped in Ho Chi Minh City in the south of Vietnam. And he had waited for me. He had waited hours while I was napping. He had dropped me off, but he didn't go anywhere. He knew I was going to come out eventually. And sure enough, I did. And he asked what I wanted to do. And I'd been traveling for a while at this point. I'd been traveling through Cambodia and I'd seen a lot of things. And there was just a part of me that was like, I would just like a like I consider it a normal night. Not like I wouldn't want to do a touristy thing. I didn't want to go to another Irish pub or wherever the expats of the English-speaking people. So I asked his, his name was Hui. I asked Hui, I said, just let's just do what you would normally do. Just take me on a normal night. And I think in my head, I thought I would go to a local restaurant or bar or something where he would go. But he took it literally. And we, next thing we did is we went to his house and we went upstairs. And I'm sitting on his couch with his wife and his son playing with his action figures and drinking grape soda. And I'm having a normal night, like in a home in the south of Vietnam with Hui and his family, and he's translating for me. Next thing we're outside with his friends at a little plastic card table drinking snake wine and playing cards. And from there, we went to a karaoke bar and we're singing karaoke beetles songs. Hey J. It was just ridiculous and delightful. And I got what I asked for. You know, I wanted a normal night, but it is not at all the normal night that I thought I got his normal night. And it was such an iconic, emblematic symbol to me of just human connection. And I, from all of the things that I went, saw and all the places that I went, spending time drinking grape soda with Huey and his family is something that has stayed with me for 20 years.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Yeah. And if you think about it developmentally, for you as a young man, you're away from home and you're traveling, you're seeing the world. But there's always that part that's kind of homesick. I wonder what my family's doing right now. We have as a kid growing up, we always played games Sunday night, it was game night. And I and I lived in England for a while and when I was 20, and just missing some of those sometimes. Having a great adventures, of course. But and and you got to tap into your younger you of being with the family. That is cool. That's true. That's great. But the other connection I had with you, and I showed this before we started the podcast, was basically in my job, whether I'm teaching classes or working with individuals or families or small groups, I'm basically a storyteller. That's what I do all day long. Some of those stories are to help validate and normalize situations for parents. So a parent will come in and tell me something their child did, and oh my God, they can't believe it. And it's this normal. And I always have a story for them that says, you're fine. And that's normal. That's child development. And just really helps them go and take a deep breath and realize they're just like the other families, and everybody's kid does some stupid stuff. And I also share a lot of cautionary tales. So lots of stories with a message of you have to be careful. There's so much out there. And then the other one is funny ones. I love humor. I laugh all day long with kids. We're playing games and I think of some story and tell them. And basically humor helps the medicine go down. That's the the spoonful of sugar. It's humor in my office. I do give out Starburst at the end, but it it's the humor that helps kids especially take the message of what I'm talking about.

Start By Being A Story Listener

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Through good stories, I love what you were just saying, Craig, about two things. And the things that really st stand out to me is one of them is the reason that I wrote this book. The book is called The Story for Everything, which is how we can notice and tell the story of everything in ways to both connect with people, but to also express how we got through something. So if it was an experience that we had, we survived something, whether it was a big life moment or whether it was finding parking at Trader Joe's. Everything to some degree is a learning experience. And as families, as individuals, we connect through those stories. And then regarding the use of humor, there's something that I've really observed because I, one of my storytelling jobs is I host a show called The Moth, which is a radio and uh podcast. People, many people know it. If you find themoth.org online or listen on a public radio station, I host the live shows that we do in my area, the San Francisco Bay Area. And what I've noticed is that when people want to say something that's heavy or serious, that if they just start telling us serious things, there's a, I don't want to say there's a resistance or an uncomfortableness, but it's hard to access or relate to them. But when they pre-set up that story with something that is either self-effacing or amusing or funny in some way, laughter has this way of lifting us up. And then we can follow that by going down, by going deeper, by going more serious, by going more real. So, in a way, laughter is the permission to access our truths and our deeper selves and our deeper connections. If we just start unloading about all the terrible things that have happened, that can be really difficult. And not I'm not saying that we're not open to hearing difficult things that have happened, but there's this, you know, this sort of equally balanced thing of we are all complex people and people that have experienced scary things or dangerous things or difficult situations have also known how to laugh and know how to enjoy and know how to find delight in it. Yeah. So balancing your storytelling with light and heavy is a really nice way and a nice tip for people to practice telling in your story. So don't just hammer us with the hard parts. Yeah. Um kind of take us in, draw us in with your humanity.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

I like to what I say about my lectures when I'm doing a parent talk or for teachers or professionals. My two goals are always to make them laugh and to make them cry. And if I can hit both in a lecture, I've accomplished what I wanted. And it usually starts out with laughter and it ends with crying. I love that. And that is that's when I've hit the gold spot. And I also love stories of resiliency. That is. Those are the most moving to me is people being resilient. And I've on legit parenting on on our other podcasts, Things of Beauty Make Me Cry, which we'll end with an episode tonight, today on Things of Beauty Make Me Cry. The majority are born out of just horrible tragedies for parents and kids. And they found resiliency. Now, I want to turn back to your book and just let our listeners know. When I first got it, I thought, oh, this is going to be like hard to tell stories. But Corey has broken it down for all sorts of situations. So the first one is job seekers. How to tell your story when you're looking for a job. Then when you have a job, leadership, giving feedback, sales, promoting yourself at work, fundraising. A good a dear friend of mine has put his head in the ring for the headship of a private school here. And what I the feedback I gave the search committee was he tells the story of the school better than anyone I've ever met. And that's what fundraisers people that are going to donate money, they listen to the stories of the school. Yes. And he knows it back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

But there's also one of the fundraising a lot of times we we lean on data. We say this is what we need it for. This is the program we're trying to fund, and almost like scaring us into giving money or guilting us into that. I agree with you, Craig. I think stories are a better way of doing that. They'll hold our attention, they'll make us care, they'll open our hearts, they'll make us see ourselves in the story of the school, really the children's story, the school that they're attending, and the and the experience that they're having. And by really being a little bit vulnerable and by being a little bit personal in those kind of ask letters and ask pleas or public addresses, I work with a lot of organizations and I help them with that, even at their auctions and their fundraising things. Not just saying now it's time to raise the paddle because there's a resistance. We're all maybe don't have as much as we'd like, and we're saving our money for some trip to Hawaii or Sydney or wherever we want to go. And yet you bring a kid up to tell their story of what an impact this program had on them and how now it's enabling them to achieve some goal that they never thought was possible, and they've achieved that because of programs like this and of the generosity of parents. We all go, oh yeah, we need more kids like that. We need more community support.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

It's funny because I just said the sitting before we started, we're so busy. April is always Gala month. And fundraisers were going to, and the credit card is just kind of going ding-ding. And we sponsor a lot of them. And I'm like, and it's just so busy. It's a busy time in April. I just want to touch on a couple of things, and then we want to get to families. But any of you parents out there who have college high schoolers who are looking at college, he's got a section on college essays, which I would much rather have my child read that and use that than doing it with AI. Really telling their story for their college essay. And the other one I just

Travel Stories And Real Connection

SPEAKER_03 21:10

cracked up about, it was for weddings and eulogies. Now, I've heard a lot of tremendous eulogies over the years. They were just tear-jerking. But on the wedding rehearsal dinner, you get so tired of some guy talking about how they got drunk and he was wow, man. You're like, oh gosh, get it over.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Most bridesmaids' toasts, most best man toasts, they're empty. They're they're or they're insider information. They're had you you had to be there kind of stories. Uh-huh. Yeah. And my my theory on those and my thinking on those is that really what you're trying to do at the end of the day is you're trying to honor the person that you're honoring. You're trying to educate the people who don't know that person as well as you do. Any kind of a marriage or wedding. That kind of thing, usually most people know one half of that couple. At least maybe they know one half better than the other. So what you're really doing is you're not just showing us that you know them. You're teaching us something like that, oh, you should know this person. This is an aspect of them.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

On a deeper level than just getting hot.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

On a deeper level. And then I also think you should close with an actual toast. Like actually toast to something, maybe some lesson that you've learned from that experience that you had with them, and something that you observe them doing, some attribute of theirs, something that you admire, you respect, you enjoy. And your toast then can connect back to it, which can turn your toast from being like a list of things that you've done together to a blessing, a hope, a wish for their future together that they experience the kind of adventure that you always saw in him or her or them, you know, that you've experienced some aspect of them. And we now come away from your toast. We went, wow, I really feel like I got to know them. And now I'm rooting for them and their marriage or their union or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

And I love the termination process in therapy, like the last session. Every last session, we talk about what they learned, how they benefited from the treatment, accomplishing their goals. And then and occasionally that will turn personal where they tell me what they got from me. But I always end with telling them what I got from them and how they changed my life. Yes. Every person I've ever seen. I let them know. And there is, I think it comes from the Talmud. The idea that anybody that crosses your threshold is bringing you a gift from God. And you should treat them that way. And it's awful in a story. Yeah. That's just fabulous. Now let's get to the pairing thing. And the other thing at the beginning of your book that I really like this concept of we have two selves. We have our experiencing selves. What am I experiencing right now? Could be the traffic, could be waiting long at the grocery store, it could be you're having a cup of tea and relaxing right now, and the kids are off to school and you're happy. So that's your what you're experiencing now. But then it's the remembered self, your memories of who you are. And I have a good analogy I'll share with you later. But I love that. So in on for families, you have the first one, which I love, and it actually the Hebrew term for the word for it is Nakaz. I I can't say it. I can't roll my tongue. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Yes. Is when you have pride in your offspring. Right? And so those stories. So I want you to touch on that. And then bedtime stories are great. And then the third one was for caregiving, like an elderly member of your family.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

But give us some tips. All right, let's talk about let's talk about the Nachas. Let's talk about pride stories of pride. I call them proud parent narratives. So this is parents, grandparents. You have children, of course, we're going to experience lots of emotions. We're going to be upset with our kids. We're going to be worried for them. And then things they'll do things well. And we're excited and we want to share that excitement to somebody else. These could be some of the, I would just say the worst stories that I often hear is the proud parent stories, because what they end up sounding to other people is bragging, is just almost like one-upsmanship, like saying, look at how smart my daughter is. Look, look at how good, you know, my kid got the lead in the play again. Isn't he great? It's we hear those kind of just brags, not even humble brags, just brags about your kid. And what it ends up doing is it either lands with a, oh, good for you, and then I'm going to tell you something good that happened to my kid, where you're just one-upping each other with these kind of tit for tat stories. Whereas when you look a little bit under the hood of what led to that moment. And so why do you feel excited about that? Often it's because the feeling that you have as this teller of the story is that you've watched them struggle. You've watched them aspire, you've watched them work really hard to get to this success that they've experienced. Not in every case, but in sometimes it's just lucky. But sometimes it's a situation where they really wanted this and they've been focusing and they've been buckling down. And maybe they had some rejection. And maybe they didn't get the part that they wanted last year. And by giving us that and framing it like a story, where now we know and we're invested in the journey that your child or grandchild was on. And when they got to that joy and that satisfaction of what it is, there's a learning that their hard work paid off or their dedication paid off, or maybe they didn't get the part, but they learned something from that too. Those kind of stories are immensely more relatable, enjoyable, and teach you something that is about who that person really is, not just what happened to them. So when you're in a situation where you're you have to tell somebody or somebody's

Humor First Then Go Deeper

SPEAKER_01 27:20

telling you about the great thing that happened to their person, their kid, their grandkid, think about it that way. Think about what how did they get there? What's the journey? Because that nachis, that pride, that feeling that you have is rooted in something a little bit deeper about um your your worries for them, your force. They weren't gonna find their people, their hope, or um, their community, their satisfaction. Um I mean, personally speaking, I'm looking right now at my daughter. I don't know if there's a video on this podcast or not, but my daughter just finished a cartoon that she drew for a class that is basically a comic book about something that really happened, a fight that she and her friends had because they wanted to go on a trip. And to them, it was just a foregone conclusion that she was going to come along on this trip, and she didn't want to go. And they didn't ask her, did she want to go? They just expected that she would go. And when she indicated she didn't want to go, they started lashing out at her that she was messing everything up and it was this whole thing. And then she starts going into she's a high school senior right now. She's talking about Freud and she's talking about Winnicott and the true self versus the false self. She's gotten into all of this. She's got this philosophical reflection reflection on the self and how the true self is hidden by the false self and how it's oh my goodness, I'm reading this little comic book that she's written, and it's it's teaching me things about philosophical and psychological truths and self-knowledge. I'm learning from my children every day.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And this podcast, my my books are all a lot of it has to do with Winnicott, who talks about as a parent just good enough. You only have to be good enough as a parent. Yeah. Your kid's gonna be fine. That's Winnicott.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

I I'm so cool. I didn't know Winnicott until my daughter, until I'm reading in my daughter's thing, it says, when introduced to Winnicott, I started thinking, people develop a false sense when they feel their real emotions aren't safe to express. The true self contains emotions that feel real.

unknown 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

That is awesome. Oh, I and I was also flat it's having as you're telling your story of your proud pride in your parents, because I can't say the word, it's if it can have a little more emotion that touches, or your emotions how it touched you, that another person or parent would understand. And I I've shared my son, who's 32 now, is a surgeon, and he works at Swedish Hospital here in Denver, which I'm very proud of. And I always follow up with, yeah, and the wildest thing is he was born at Swedish Hospital. And I remember that day like it was yesterday, and it came full circle. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Born there and now he born there with me and helping others.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

That's beautiful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Okay, so we got that now. Bedtime stories. Yes. You had several great ones here. How to help your kids tell stories at night. I love the one, the word at a time. So I might start with once, you might say upon, I say a time, and then you continue, right? And the other one I thought was great was imaginary vocation. Tell us more about that. The bedtime is so important for connection.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Absolutely. So I want to pre-I want to set up the bedtime story thing, which is that anyone who's ever written authors and writers out there, you know sometimes the first draft of your thing is not the one that makes the final cut. Right. I showed this chapter. So I wanted to write a story about bedtime stories or teaching a lesson about bedstore bedtime stories. And so I included those games you were talking about. They're playful, rooted in the improvisational theater models of collaborative creativity, which I think is a really fabulous way as parents to engage our children and awaken their creativity, harness their creativity, and maybe a little bit of their subconscious, unconscious comes out when you're playing games. And it's really kind of fun to find out who they really are and what's going on in there. Um, so games like Word at a Time Story, where you're collaboratively creating one word at a time and making up a story together. So you're not having to invent it, but what you're really just doing is you're connecting as people, you're building something together, and you're usually surprising and delighting each other because all you have control of is one half of the words. Every other word, it might steer, veer off into another direction. So it's amazingly delightful and collaboratively creative. Same with the the I call it shared fake memory, is let's pretend that we went somewhere. And it'll start with someone like, hey, remember our trip to the moon or what somewhere that you went. And then what you try to do is you start every sentence with yes, like building on that idea. Yes, I remember our trip to the moon. And then you add something. And remember that there was that tunnel that we found? Yes, inside that tunnel there was a community of moon people. Yes, and they

Using Stories At Work And Life

SPEAKER_01 32:40

were cooking moon burgers, yes, and remember, like building the burgers was tremendous. Oh, it was incredible, yes. And remember, we took that moon sauce back home and we gave it to our favorite restaurant. Yes, and now that restaurant is the most successful restaurant in Denver.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

And then we banned, and now we're living in a mansion.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yes, yes. So by just building, by building on somebody else's ideas together, you're connecting. That's the subtext of all of this is you're laughing and connecting and enjoying and inventing together. And there are still, Craig, my children are teenagers now. There are still stories from when they were little kids that we still remember and retell because we made them up in there in during bedtime. On the flip side, and this is where I was saying that I had to rewrite this chapter. I showed this to some parent friends of mine to get their feedback, and they said, This is terrible. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, these are people who have young children. They're like, your job as a parent is to get your kids to go to sleep, not to be delighted and laughing and entertained because now you're taking bedtime and you're dragging it out. So I look at it as there's a couple kinds of bedtime. There is let's go to bed, let's go to sleep bedtime, and then there's also let's wind down together, let's connect together. It's very intimate. So for the it's time to go to sleep parents that are listening to this. The trick is the opposite of the yes and thing, is using way too much detail in your stories. If you're making up a story, for example, go into extreme details about the boring minutiae of a story. Once upon a time, there was an accountant, and the accountant had a very large stack of papers on his desk, and he had accounts receivable, and he had invoices, and he had bills to pay. Just go into extreme details about this. After a while, your your kids' eyes will get heavy and they'll kind of start to nod off, and all of the details that you tell will be too much for them, and they will basically be bored, and you will knock your kids out and they'll fall asleep.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

So you bore them to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

That's the best kind of bedtime story, is a story that's going to get your kid to sleep versus the entertain and delight your child, which has also got its place.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

Aaron Powell But it's so important for that bonding. And what you could do if you're a parent. Some of the kids I see they have a little beanbag chair in the room, a little quiet space, like where they want to relax, maybe some books. And you could do that fun part there, then transition to the bed. Or you have them sit up in bed for the that fun part and then say, now let's lie down and get ready to go to sleep. But from a brain analogy, so the brain wakes up from the brainstem up to the prefrontal cortex. For the prefrontal cortex is your last part of your brain to wake up, and that's why we all drink coffee in the morning because caffeine increases dopamine to your prefrontal cortex. Now, when the brain falls asleep, the prefrontal cortex is that logical planning, organization, attention part. But when you fall asleep, the brain turns that off first. Right behind that area of the brain is your creative brain. It's where you create things. And so that first part is shut off, and then it allows you to just have fun and create and do all sorts of dreaming and stuff. And then that part shuts down and they fall asleep. So is it true then?

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Is the prefrontal cortex also your warning center, like if there's danger, if there's a lot of amygdala, which is down by your brainstem.

SPEAKER_03 36:30

And and it often shows up in our dreams. And what I tell kids is if you ever have a nightmare, say to your brain, thank you for keeping me safe. Because nightmares are your brains rehearsing potential problems in the future. And they find that people who have more nightmares have less anxiety during the day than people that don't. Because the brain has been rehearsing how to handle these things, how to do these things. And figuring it out. But it's the amygdala is weighed on its brainstem. And so what happens, that area of the brain is still on. And so one of the problems is your prefrontal cortex, which you helps you be logical, is shut off. But then the amygdala is still there going, Oh, remember that time when something bad happened? What if a burglar comes? What if and my daughter, when she was little, we adopted her at age seven, and she had a pretty rough seven first six and a half years of her life. And she just before she'd fall asleep, she'd say something about, oh, could we talk about that time when she got abused, right? I'd say, honey, there's no answers I can give you right now that would be logical because your logic brain is turned off. So how about if we go to sleep and tomorrow morning we'll talk about it when your prefrontal cortex, or I call it the president in my book, first book, when your president's awake, then we can figure it out. And she would say, okay. And I gotta tell you, maybe 1% of the time with the next day, she'd even remember. So all kids have that.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

But it's that thing I think when you're when you're quieting your thoughts. Yes, and other parts of your brain actually. And that's partly also why I'm a big advocate of people of all ages doing and studying improvisation, because it's learning by playing, by using activities and games to activate several parts of our brain. One of them is the creative center. The other is to turn off the critic, the critic that lives in all of us that says, that's a bad idea. No, that's it's you know, that's it's not funny, that's not intelligent, that's not smart. When we train ourselves and train our brains to quiet that voice, we start to listen to the other ideas and we start to yes, and the parts of us that say, I can build on this, I can create this, I can invent this, and we find balance and we find that we can hear those voices when the others quiet down.

SPEAKER_03 39:09

Yes. And so the critic is coming from the prefrontal cortex. That's your filter. Now, unfortunately, I see many kids who have ADHD, they don't have a filter, they think something's funny, and they just blurt it out in front of the class, and then they're in trouble. And the teacher is, okay, man, you've got to learn how to be a good comedian. It's knowing when to tell the joke, when not to tell the joke, and don't tell the joke twice. Um but it's hard for them when they don't have the president working. But you're right, when you want to be creative, you just want to let that flow. Yeah. And that's where great stuff comes from. And I the other idea is you're you're doing it with others, right? In this process of creativity. And I read a book years ago, blanking on the name, but it looked at all these famous inventors and entrepreneurs who came up with these original ideas. And the premise of the book for each person, they looked at and most often it was their spouse, that they collaborated with. They had someone they collaborated with. It wasn't like they were sitting in a room alone going, Oh, Eureka, I figured it out. Yeah. It was this process of trial and error, but it was doing it with someone else, and that collaboration. Doing that with your kids.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

It's just all great when you, whether it's a spouse, a friend, a partner, or just learning to trust yourself and those instincts. The idea that I try to encourage in others with their stories or their communications in general is that listening is not just the talking, but the listening. So storytelling, here's an example of this. You were talking at the beginning of this show about Harry Potter and your kids loved Harry Potter. There's a game that uh I think it's in the book that is inspired by Harry Potter. And it's something that I learned at Bats Improv in San Francisco, and it's called Port Key. And this is a storytelling game that everybody listening can play today or tonight with their kids or their families, with a friend. And it works like this. So do you guys remember what a port key is in Harry Potter? I don't. That concept. So it's a magic spell that's put onto a normal everyday object. Say it's a pencil or a I'm looking at your background, Craig, a trophy, a banner, a coffee cup, a beer bottle, like a normal everyday object. And in Harry Potter, what happens is that there's a spell that's put on that object. For example,

Proud Parent Stories Without Bragging

SPEAKER_01 41:30

on the Tri-Wizard Tournament Cup in the Goblet of Fire book, where when Harry touches it, what happens is it transports him. It takes him somewhere else because there's some magic on that cup. It just looks like the cup, but he touches it, but it takes him to a graveyard where he has a showdown with Voldemort, He Who Shall Be Named. And so the game, storytelling game, works the same way. You give an object to someone, not a physical object, but you say a word to someone. So I would say a trophy, and I would give you that object, Craig, and you would say, Okay, trophy takes me to, and then you would remember some moment in your life. Not it doesn't have to be a whole story, but does trophy take you anywhere? If I say trophy, and then you get tell me a short, where does trophy take you to?

unknown 42:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:20

And what's great is everything that you see on my fireplace has a story behind it.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Of course. Of course. So you would say that you would give you would give a short thing. So does trophy take you anywhere, actually? Like does that remind you of anything? Yeah, it does. What does it remind you of?

SPEAKER_03 42:35

My last one was back in October when I decided to do a whole new thing. I've always done endurance sports. But I I took up bodybuilding. And I was the oldest one there at 67. And I competed against 40-year-olds and up. That was masters. And I won. Amazing. It was the most joyful two hours. Oh my gosh. I it was just pure joy. Just having fun. The training was over, the months of training was over, and it was pure joy.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

My my least favorite thing is interrupting a story, but just to teach you the game. So what you just did was amazing. I gave you an object trophy, and it took us, took you somewhere that I did not expect to you as a 67-year-old bodybuilder winning a trophy and you discovering something about yourself. You just found a story and told it to me. Now, here's what happens next. Now you look in that memory, in your mind's eye, and you find another object that was there, like part of that tournament or part of that gym or whatever it was. And then you give me that object. So for example, what's something that might have been there? Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

A rice cake.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

A rice cake, rice cake, right? And so I would say, okay, rice cake takes me to, and then I would say my memory experience of rice cake. So rice cake takes me to college, where my disgusting apartment with my two roommates in Evanston, Illinois. And the only thing we had in our cupboards was tasteless rice cakes. The only thing that we seemed to have because we had bought them and nobody ate them and we never bought any more food. So night after night, we would sit there just eating these bland rice cakes. Horrible couch. So you've just reminded me of a memory. And so in doing this and going back and forth, or if you have a little group of people through these little snippets, these two or three line or sentence memories, mini stories, what you're doing is you're opening up this discovery that I feel like I've made, which is that we are full of stories. I haven't thought about those stupid rice cakes in years, decades. And it's like you've reminded me of this whole other time and part of my life. And we're also connecting. Stories are the thing that are bonding us and connecting us. So you can do this with your kids. You could do it with your parents. If you have aging parents, using these kind of games are ways of not just hearing the same old stories that they always tell, but opening up these other memories and veins of who we are. Because at the end of the day, this is how our kids are going to remember their grandparents, is through the stories that they heard and told. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That they've heard. Yeah. But that is our little deeper. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:21

But first I really I know Evan, Illinois really well. I grew up in St. Louis and went to college in Valparaiso, Indiana. So I've been over to Evanstead and buddy went there. So I was like totally, oh my gosh, you're a Midwesterner too. And also the idea with your buddies living together and there's nothing to eat. You're like, oh man. And you don't want to cook because the dishes are all dirty. Yep. And nothing to cook with.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

And then you have to flip the phone.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

And nobody's wanting to clean those dishes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

I don't know if those are my dishes. I'm not going to clean your dishes. And so nobody does the dishes.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

Now, on the family stories, I think it's so important. So stories tell kids where they fit into the universe. Why where are they in this universe? And it's related to your family. And those family stories that give them roots. So if you think of a tree, this is the roots for your child to hold them up when times are tough. And we adopted our daughter when she was seven, and she would go around and tell the kids at school she had four mothers. And they'd be like, What? And then she'd tell her story about her birth mom, then her grandma, and then the stepmom who was Yeah. And then my wife Lisa. But it gave her a sense of, okay, this is where I came from, here's where I am. And for children who don't know where they came from, that's a tough one. When they don't know what their past is or they were abandoned and don't know why. That that is a good one. But it's so important to have those family stories and memories.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Yeah. There is a an amazing moth story. I don't know if you've ever heard this one, but speaking of adoption, uh, do you know the band Run DMC? Oh, yeah, sure. So in Run DMC, there's a the Daryl McDaniels is the lead singer or the the frontman of Run DMC. And he told a story. It's on, you can find it on the radio and the Moth Radio Hours website, about he's a rapper and he's known for rap music. And he talks about being somehow one song that just kind of got to him and really just touched him. And it's this song by Sarah McLaughlin called In the Eyes of an Angel. You know that song? Far away from here. And and he just he couldn't explain it. This song, this very soft ballad, really touched him. And he connected with her. He met her at a party and he told her about the impact that this song had on him. And it came out through their conversation that they had both been adopted. That in some way that song connected them because it was their experience of that, of no like that wanting to know yourself. Yeah. That I think in adoption, there's this sense of who am I, and this curiosity about your past and your background and filling in the blanks. Yeah. And it's just a I really highly recommend listening to it, but it's that thing that sometimes our stories are the most unexpected things about us, can also be the most telling and the most insightful.

SPEAKER_03 48:35

Yeah. And and emotionally deep. And we had a fun experience. We took my in-laws to a one of their relatives past, and it's an Italian family, and everybody's related to everybody in Denver, if you're Italian, got all these relatives and friends of relatives. And but all the stories that were being shared was just amazing. And I can remember as a kid listening to my grandpa talk and telling old stories from Prohibition when he made rice rice beer or yeah, rice beer in the bathtub, because it was prohibition. And now everybody passed up. But he had more stories. And it it just gave you a sense of these are my relatives. This is where I am. This is who I am.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

As my wife would say, uh your grandfather just got flowers in heaven. Like when we tell stories about people like our forebears, the previous generation, you've just done a mitzvah. You've just done a good thing. You have brought him back, you have remembered him, you've passed his stories on now, too. That this is the best thing we also can be doing with our aging parents and relatives is listening to their stories, is encouraging them to tell their stories and passing those stories on. Because I think at the at this phase, this reflective phase of our lives when we might want to write a memoir or record these relatives, it's so important and impactful because they've lived lives, they've made mistakes, they've also had silly, funny, wonderful things happen, and they've had difficult things happening. And those stories are impactful for us to learn and move on.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

And they survived the difficult times. They had resilience, right? And I had a very meaningful experience about a year and a half ago. My mom

Bedtime Story Games And Brain Science

SPEAKER_03 50:20

was starting to lose her memory. She passed last about a year ago at 98. And we were talking, and she said, I'm losing my stories. And I said, Mom, I'll hold on to your stories for you. All us children will hold on to your stories. And she was so pleased that somebody else had her stories. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

Thank you for sharing that. That's better.

SPEAKER_03 50:52

We laughed and now we're gonna cry. You did it. You did it. What do you think? Did I earn a beer later tonight? I got a beer later tonight. But low calorie, of course. And one last thing I want to share, Corey, it's been just delightful talking with you, and then I'll end with things of beauty make me cry. But I love the analogy for your child's life, for your own life. There were all this giant stained glass window, and each piece of glass tells us a story of who we are. And your child is it's billions of pieces, and parents get all so upset. Oh, I yelled at them, it's just gonna hurt them forever. And I'm like, no. The rule is one to five for every negative experience you have with your kid. If you can have four positives and one negative, you're just fine. So you have your child has all these positive pieces of glass. And okay, there's this one piece that isn't very pretty, but it pales in comparison to all of the other amazing stories they have collected. And they have this beautiful stained glass window. And just because one time that happened, they're not even going to remember it, most likely. Yeah. There are some situations with trauma where it's like someone threw a b a baseball through your window and knocked a big chunk on it. And that's tough.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

But we do. We remember those. And our kids, my kids certainly do. They remember the mean girl at the swimming pool that one time when they were a little. They'll hold on to that. And there's a reason. I think that those memories, those stories, they also teach us things. They teach us about other people and what we did, how we felt. So our stories don't all have to be happy, positive stories. We can talk about the learnings.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

They're all part of the college window, just like everybody else. Corey, this has just been delightful. Let me we'll end with Things of Beauty Make Me Cry, and we're going to do it on Nakaz? Did I say it right? Not make the hus sound. Okay. Pride in offspring. But now this one, this young man is not my offspring. But I have a lot of that with my clients. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The pride in seeing them doing things. And I'm almost like the grandfather who's cool to them, like I'm grandpa that's telling stories and helping them out. And this young man, I was just so pleased. I'm going to read a letter he sent to me an email. But I knew him when he was in elementary school and middle school, and he's neuroexceptional. Worked with him back then, and he always talked about he wanted to be a first responder. He wanted to be, that was his dream. And he had actually memorized it. I didn't even know this existed. But apparently, between ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, there's 20 different sound patterns they'll make, which communicates what kind of emergency it is and what kind of vehicle it is. And this kid had memorized them all and could do them on request. He would just start making the sound. Verbally? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But two years ago he came back to see me, and I'll tell you that part next. But he said, I said, You remember the fire side signal from the sirens? He said, Yeah, now I have an app that has them all on them. Okay, there's an app for that. Yeah, of course. But he he accomplished his goal, was an EMT working for a really good company here in Denver. And then his father suddenly passed away. He had sepsis. And he it really rocked his world and ended up making some mistakes on the job because he was depressed and struggling with some trauma. And he lost his job. And he came to see me just to get some support. And we just spent a lot of time on the grief of his father's loss. I'll never forget when he said to me, I miss the sound of him pulling up in his yellow forerunner after work. He was home and he doesn't have that anymore. But he he started to recover, he got another job with a different company, and then he decided to go back to the first company and interview to see if you get back on board. And he wrote me this. He said, Craig, I just wanted to give you some follow-up that I I had in a meeting with the ambulance office manager today. And from what I can tell, it went very well. Thanks for your advice. I left nothing uncovered. I laid out my entire situation to him and admitted that I had made some behavioral mistakes while processing my dad's passing, which led me to do some things I'm not proud of. The office manager seemed very receptive to what I shared. He gave me his card, took down my name and number, and said he would talk to the HR to confirm whether I could be rehired. He also mentioned that things look good. He plans to reach out to me next month about upcoming academy to see if I can get back on board with him. If it all goes well, I'm hoping this could be a real step forward. And the last party says, I have to admit, after I left your office, I teared up a little. I left the office manager's office. I'm sorry. After I left the office, I teared up a little. It feels like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders because this has been weighing on me for a while. I'll keep you in the loop if I hear anything further. But I really wanted to thank you for coaching me to run towards the roar. You run towards the roar of the lion. And I'm happy to tell you now he is not only working there again, but also has a second job where he goes to motocross events and he's the EMT. And yesterday I saw a picture on Instagram of him. He's a huge man, he's about 6'4, he's big. And he's in his action gear running across this dirt track, and there's motorcycles in the picture right next to him, right? And him in action running to k to save some guy who had fallen, right? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm just so proud of him. So I thought it was just beautiful. It is. That is one of those moments where you I just treasure, I'll keep this letter a long time. What a gift. Beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

You helped him find and share something about him. And that's the kind of insight that I think stories do.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

They are. Corey, thank you again for being on. Again, parents. And Sydney, can we put something on the podcast about the book title? Absolutely. And the show description.

SPEAKER_01 57:29

And the moth. Yes.org is is, yeah, I tell stories there. Corey Rosen is my name, so CoryRosen.com is an easy way to find out more about me.

SPEAKER_03 57:42

But thank you again. It's been delightful and it's just been as joyable as I had imagined. So that's a great idea. And for your listeners out there, if you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. We we will get back to our series on how do I know if my child is well, but I wanted to work this one in today. And as a parent, relax and remember you just have to be this

Roots Resilience And Closing Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 58:06

side of good enough. Thank you.