Troubleshooting Charlotte Mason Narration Part 2

“Help, my child abhors narration! What do I do?”

Some parents I’ve coached have expressed the struggle of getting their child to narrate. Now, usually, when a child starts off school using the CM method from a young age, narration becomes almost second nature to them. (Correction: narration is actually second nature to children! Remember, when your toddler comes home from an afternoon out with Daddy and he tells you everything down to the shape of the juice stain that he squirted on Daddy’s pants?)

Questions to Troubleshoot Narration Issue

Consider the following questions: 

1. Was my child used to the traditional method of schooling? 

When a child has gone to traditional school, narration can feel strange, and it requires more effort to think and practice communication. Some children who enjoyed traditional school might not like the idea of needing to do narration. 

If your child has done traditional school for a time and you feel that it has to do with why she’s resisting narration, it may help to have some “detox” time before jumping into Charlotte Mason homeschooling. Many families attest to the need of “unlearning” what the student (and the parents!) may have been used to, such as the habit of cramming or learning things mainly to pass a test. This period can be a time of enjoying time out in nature, or spending time together learning a skill like baking or cooking, or anything minus the academic lessons for a time. It can even include a time of reading stories together, but more just for fun and not yet requiring narrations. 

If you have already been into the Charlotte Mason homeschooling and can’t really take time off, one possible solution is to put a pause on lessons that require narration—which is essentially everything—and take a week or so of just reading for fun. That may take the pressure off of the idea of narration for a time, and help you ease into it again afterwards. 

2. Have I been a bit too strict when we were first starting to narrate? 

This is a bit of a hard question to ask, but we need to be honest. Sometimes, our child’s reaction towards something is just that, a reaction to something that we our parents have done. This is not in any way meant to pass blame, but we need to know if there are areas that we need to improve on, and act on it. 

3. Have I corrected him or her too much in early attempts at narration? 

This is related to point #2. Sometimes, when we are excited to start off with the novel idea of asking for narrations, we may be too strict at wanting them to do it perfectly the first time. This may be in the form of correcting inaccurate information, grammar, or sentence structure. Some children may shrink from this form of correction. Interestingly, when Miss Mason tells us to have our children narrate, it also requires patient restraint from us, because errors like grammar and sentence structure can be corrected in different ways—just not during narration! 

If you have done that in the past, don’t beat yourself up; we’ve probably almost all done that at one point or another! Instead, from this point forward, let’s focus on building an atmosphere where your child is free to try things out in his narration without getting scolded. 

4. Have I modeled how to do narration, or just expected him or her to know what to do? 

Some children immediately take off narrating from Day 1, while others may need a little bit of hand-holding. One way of doing this is to model narration. It may not necessarily be you narrating the whole scene, but you may want to start off the narration time with a sentence or two of your own. Or, you may also do a whole scene if you would like; just make sure the focus is on encouraging your child to tell what he or she remembers. We don’t ask direct questions and instead allow our child to form his own connections with the stories we read. 

Don’t Make Narration a Power Struggle

Now, it doesn’t have to be a power struggle to get your child to narrate. But to help you get over the bumps a bit until he gets used to it, here are some suggestions: 

1. Mix up oral narration with some comic narration. Draw at least four to six boxes where your child can draw scenes from the lesson. This encourages them to think of more things to talk about. 
2. Consider creative ways of narration. You can do a role play narration once a week, or even a puppet show narration where your child uses toys to dialogue. Some children are more comfortable getting their toys to talk. But remember not to overdo these kinds of creative narration, because these take time and may bog down your schoolwork when done too often. These are great to change up the routine once in a while, but Charlotte Mason narration still hinges on simple, oral narration. 

Narration is a Necessary Component of a CM Education

Now, I’ve had a parent ask me if she could just do away with narration since her daughter resists it so much! Don’t! Narration is a necessary component of learning in the CM method. Try some of the tips above and let us know how it goes!

*Most of this post is an excerpt from our book, Help! I Love CM, But… A Troubleshooting Guide for the Charlotte Mason Homeschool Parent, available on Amazon 🙂