Narrative styles adopted by mothers when telling a known story to their preschool-aged children: A qualitative study from Sri Lanka

Storytelling plays an important role in children’s overall development and wellbeing. Using stories to assess language allows for the simultaneous evaluation of both receptive and expressive language skills, which are essential for identifying developmental language delays and informing suitable educational or therapeutic support. Without age-appropriate narrative skill, children would struggle to achieve desired communication as well as academic goals. Cultural and language differences in narrative styles are also linked to children’s literacy. Since children learn from the immediate environment, maternal storytelling practices strongly influence children’s language and socioemotional development. We explore the narrative styles employed by Sri Lankan mothers when telling a known story to their preschool aged children. Twenty mother-child dyads were video-recorded when mothers told the story of the hare and the tortoise to preschool aged children, using a wordless picture sequence. Observational notes were taken focusing on the different strategies used by mothers to facilitate the child’s development through storytelling. All videos were transcribed verbatim and was reviewed multiple times. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to acknowledge the researcher’s influence on data interpretation. Three key themes emerged: inferring the shared familiarity of the story, engaging the children as co-narrators, and moral framing through storytelling. The findings reflect how mothers, as primary caregivers, use different narrative styles to effectively involve children, support their language and transfer moral values in storytelling. This could inform the design of culturally relevant narrative assessments and parent-training programmes to stimulate children’s language development.