When my son was very young, he liked to hear bedtime stories. Wife generally read books or narrated stories. Sometimes the responsibility fell on me. I was too lazy to read and with my limited recollection of full tales my well of stories dried up pretty soon. ☹️ Only options seemed to be to either read a book or try to recollect full stories from my past reading. That would have made for too much effort for me but then I found a simple solution: Tell him his own story! Son warmed up to the idea quickly. 👍
The basic structure of the story always remained the same!
Start with his birth and incorporate different activities into the tale. Activities could include things like reading, writing, math, biking, swimming, sports, music etc. In the tale, in every activity, when he started, he would suck and over time he would get really good at it. In some instances, he would even do well enough to get a prize! 👏To test if he was sleepy, before every activity, I would ask how he did when he started. If he was not sleepy or sleeping yet he would enthusiastically reply “He sucked!”. 😂 If I did not get a response it was cue for me to end the storytelling 😃
The beauty of any solution lies in its simplicity and in this tale, I could add, modify or change elements based on whatever new activities he was currently engaged in or had recently taken part in. After a while whenever he said “Dad, tell me a story!” both of us knew what he wanted to hear 😉
My reasoning as to why it always worked
1) It had a ring of familiarity to it 👍
2) It always had a happy ending 🥰
3) Kids (and many grown ups) like to hear their own praise from others! 😅
In 1921, she joined an Arctic expedition across the Chukchi Sea to Russia’s Wrangel Island. She was recruited for the expedition to sew fur clothing for the team. She joined the expedition to earn money for her ailing son Bennett. Long story short, the expedition ran into rough weather literally and she was left caring for one expedition member who fell sick while other members of the team ventured out. She cared for the sick explorer who died after about 5 months. All alone, except for the expedition’s cat for company, she toughed it out for ~ 8 months in extreme weather till she was rescued. The money she earned helped save her son. 
It was heartbreaking to see and hear George Floyd call out for his mother as his life was ebbing away. 
It was heartening to read about Bam Adebayo surprising his mom by buying a home for her in appreciation of all her hard work and the sacrifices made by her when he was growing up. 
TheRajBlog 