How Children Tell Stories: A Guide by Age

How children tell stories is a powerful factor that speech-language pathologists (SLPs) use to help diagnose language disorders and understand how students use language to communicate. In addition, it can help us understand how students comprehend what they read or hear. SLPs often hear concerned parents describe having a hard time truly grasping what their child is talking about when they tell their family about the events of their day or tell stories. Sometimes, parents find themselves asking frequent questions or doing a lot of inferencing to understand the details of the event or story their child is describing.

Children with language disorders tend to tell or retell stories that show poor understanding of temporal and causal relations, contain few specific details, include errors in the information they present, and run significantly shorter than expected. However, what to expect from a child’s ability to tell or retell stories varies significantly based on their age.

Knowing what to expect from a child’s ability to produce narratives at each age can be another helpful tool for understanding your child’s language development. It’s also worth noting that the way children and adults produce narratives can vary based on their cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Typical Story Structures by Age

Ages 2-3: Heap Stories

• Mainly consists of labeling events or actions
• Shows no organization among the events
• Sentences are simple declaratives (e.g., “The frog jumped.” “The girl is eating.”)

Age 3: Sequence Stories

• The sequence of events relates to a central character or setting
• Although there’s no true plot, there’s a description of the events related to the main character
• Actions of the main character aren’t necessarily chronologically or causally ordered

Ages 4-4.5: Primitive Narratives

• Stories contain an initiating event, an attempt (actions of the main character in pursuit of a goal), and some consequences (discussion of the achievement or non-achievement of the character’s goal) related to the central theme
• There’s no true story ending yet
• Similarly, there’s no discussion of the character’s motivation

Ages 4.5-5: Chain Narrative

• Shows some cause and effect and temporal relationships
• The plot is not strong and does not connect to the motivations of the characters
• There is a story ending, but it might be abrupt or illogical in relation to the events
• Also contains an initiating event, an attempt, and some consequences
• Character motivation might be present

Ages 5-7: True Narrative

• Central theme, character, and plot are present
• Character’s motivations are discussed
• Events are chronological, and cause-effect relationships are established
• Finally, this stage contains an initiating event, attempt, consequences, and a resolution (ending that is related to the main problem)

Your child’s SLP can help assess your child’s narrative ability if you have any concerns. From there, they can use evidence-based interventions to improve your child’s ability to express themselves through narratives and storytelling.

We’re Here to Help

If you have questions about how children tell stories or your child’s language development, contact our team at ETLC. We’re happy to help.

Source: Paul, Rhea, and Courtenay F. Norbury. Language Disorders from Infancy through Adolescence. St. Louis: Elsevier Inc., 2012.