Telling at Nursing Homes

Telling at nursing homes can be a rewarding and exciting experience. But, the residents have special needs and that carries over into storytelling. This paper does not include seniors who are living independently at senior homes or who attend senior citizens clubs. For the most part, telling to the average senior is no different than telling to any other adult. However, when a teller goes into a nursing home, it calls for a little special care in story selection and performance. There is a fine line most tellers who tell to seniors try not to cross and that is…not talking down to residents of nursing homes by selecting stories that are meant for young children. There are twp exceptions…if a multi-generational day is held at a nursing home, stories for the youngsters is enjoyed by both the young and the "young at heart." Also, a nursing home may ask for folktales from a particular culture – Native American, African, etc. Then, whatever stories you have in your repertoire, would be most appropriate.

1. Earmarks of a good story
2. Stories to tell
3. Tips for Telling
4. Bibliography and websites
5. Appreciations

• Keep the stories short (4-10 minutes)
• Avoid complicated plot lines and too many characters
• Avoid any story with violence. As people age, they become much more sensitive.
• Stories with the themes of love or that contain a lesson/message element and/or contain humor.
• Religious stories
• Personal experience stories – especially those about your own grandparents or of times past.
• Biographies of exciting, inspiring people.
• Relationship stories especially funny stories about older married couples.
• Don’t avoid stories with death in them, but try not dwelling on that part of the story. Again, seniors are very sensitive.
• Tell stories where there is a senior character who is strong and still out on the quest/ avoid stories that stereotype seniors as in "the mean (dirty), old man, the silly, old woman, etc."
• If at all possible, add some song to your story, so they can sing along. Seniors love to sing!
• Some tellers like to use a tell-and-draw story for small groups.
• Some tellers like to tell ghost stories…but not gruesome ones.
• Seniors for the most part, like a story that has some "spice" in it, but do not care for vulgar or explicit sexual stories.
• Again, for the most part, seniors do not like stories that put others down or that relies on the contemporary humor. The greater majority will be out of touch with what’s in the news and simply can’t relate to it.
• Find stories written by other senior citizens. They will relate to these memoir stories.

• Any of the Nasreddin’s stories such as "Nazreddin's Luck" and "Nazreddin Saves the Moon" can be found in a Google search such as: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/reading/.

• 'Praying Hands' story – found as website: http://www.quotegarden.com/albrecht.html

• The Cracked Pot http://www.geocities.com/servingheart/green_pastures/pot.htm.

• The Tiger's Whisker (variants) by Courlander, Harold

• The Piper's Revenge -Robin Williamson-5 Humorous Tales From Scotland and Ireland

• Cinderella (Variants and from different countries) esp. Duncan Williams "Traveller's Cinderella"

• The Man Who Married a Troll

• Two of Everything (variants) A Chinese Folktale by Lily Toy Hong

• The Fisherman and his Wife (variants) collected by Brothers Grimm

• Crooked Mick (Australian folklore!)

• The Lute Player collected by Andrew Lang. Also on the website:http://talesandlegends.net/Lute.html.

Seasonal Tales (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter; Christmas, Easter, Hanukah etc)

• My First Day at School; How I Broke My Father's Legs; Learning to Swim; Choosing a Sister etc.
  One of my favorite stories to tell to Nursing Homes is "Two Old Women Make a Bet". I often pair it with the Cherokee story of the Origin of Strawberries.

• I talk about the oldest war in the world: the war between men and women.  Since most nursing home residents are elderly ladies, they seem to like the subject matter.

• The Perfect Heart

• http://members.fortunecity.com/racelady/heart.html

• Chicken Soup for the Soul (various stories)

• $50,000 Race Horse

• Muldoon in Love and most of Patrick McManus’s short stories.

• Many of the short stories from Richard Kennedy collections

• Once a Good Man (variants) Jane Yolen’s The Hundreth Dove

• The Three Wishes (variants) Swedish folktale

• Sleeping Ugly by Jane Yolen

• Use a microphone. Even if you think you don’t need it, use it.
• Get use to members of the audience going to sleep
• Be ready for outbursts. Remember that not all nursing home residents are seniors. Some are long-term care patients who are there for a variety of reasons.
• Talk to the activity director ahead of time to make sure the room that you are in is adequate. Make sure that the residents that they bring in to the event, want to be there. Oftentimes, they will bring everyone in whether they are capable of listening to a story or not. Some residents are too sick or too depressed to get into a story. And, never, never schedule storytelling that will delay or replace Bingo, Wheel of Fortune, or any of their beloved card games. Never!
• If at all possible play a musical instrument, sing folk songs, tell jokes or riddles between the stories.
• Try to illicit stories from them by asking…do you remember your first doll? Your first bicycle. A favorite birthday, etc.
• Have a little give-away – a bookmark, a bell, or a little trinket that relates to one of the stories you told.
• If the teller feels comfortable enough, after the telling is over, try to go to each resident and take his/her hand. They love being touched. Tell them how happy you are that they came to hear the stories.
• One thing you don’t have to worry about when returning to the same facility is repeating a story you told before. Most of the listeners won’t remember what you told. So, if they enjoyed it before…rejoice in the retelling!

Mary Lu Bretsch, Mike Anderson, Mabel Kaplan, Elizabeth Ellis