Stories: Mean Bunny and The Rules of Good Behavior

I love to tell stories, which you probably could have figured out from the fact that I blog. I started telling stories to my daughter when she was about 18 months old. We alternate between real life stories of events in my daughter's life, retold fairy tales, and completely made up stories. The made up stories are just goofy little things featuring "pretend friends" interacting with my daughter in various adventures.

Some of those characters have taken on their own life in her imagination. Freddy Frog and Ronnie and Rachel Robot (twins, you know, Ronnie is short for Veronica) have become faithful companions for all sorts of imaginary jaunts, usually in a rocket ship. Their characteristics, ages, and characters have evolved somewhat over time. Freddy has shifted from a pond frog to a tree frog and he is much less hyper and annoying than he used to be. He has an ever changing number of siblings and multiple birthdays each year. Ronnie and Rachel Robot don't have as much personality, but they do live in a treehouse, are afraid of rain, and eat birthday cake for dinner. So they are fun to have around and nicely fill out the group.

Some characters I tried to introduce haven't made it into the canon. Francesca and her pet dragon, for example, made a brief appearance when my daughter was about two and then disappeared once again, although I rather liked them. Cinderella was a character for a while and my daughter would want to take an imaginary trip to Cinderella's house to help her with chores before going to the ball together. Then Cinderella would reciprocate by visiting our home and helping us out with our chores. Lately we haven't seen much of Cinderella, though. Other fairy tale characters have taken her place and stories about them tend to follow the book or movie plot more closely.

The way my husband and I use the stories has changed over time as well. At first our stories were purely for fun, something to entertain our daughter in the car or while snuggling before bed time. It didn't take long until we evolved them into gentle teaching tools. For example, the character of Mean Bunny appears to be here to stay for a while. Mean Bunny is usually a very poorly behaved character, which I suppose the name makes obvious. He hurts the other characters and gets into trouble and my daughter's character usually has to correct and teach him. The lesson she teaches him over and over are the "Rules of Good Behavior" which we came up with as a family. I think they are pretty handy in keeping small bunnies out of trouble.

The Rules of Good Behavior
No hurting other people. Keep your hands, feet, teeth and ears to yourself.
Speak kindly and respectfully to others.
Don't grab or take toys from other kids, bunnies, robots or frogs.
Share, take turns, and wait for your turn patiently.
When you are frustrated or mad walk away. Play with another toy, another kid or bunny, or ask an adult for help.

Of course, Mean Bunny never can remember the rules and gets into all kinds of trouble on the playground or over at our house for a play date. He gets consequences and feels terribly sad and then my daughter's character takes him aside and reminds him of the rules. Once Mean Bunny follows the rules he has much more fun and everything ends happily. On a few occasions recently my daughter has declared that Mean Bunny isn't mean anymore and that he's become Nice Bunny. Most of the time, though, she still wants to hear stories about Mean Bunny. I suppose it's nice to feel wise and mature and capable, no matter how old you are.

Mean Bunny by Rose Anne Karesh, 2014.