That camping trip your family still talks about? Science says it’s worth more than any toy under the tree.
Most of the world knows Jason Kelce for his career as a former center for the Philadelphia Eagles football team.
As far as his four daughters are concerned, though, his most important role is master of bedtime storytelling.
On the latest episode of the “New Heights” podcast with his brother Travis Kelce, Jason explained that his favorite thing to do at bedtime is tell his stories and sing songs for his girls.
Generally, Jason likes to either make up his own stories or stick to the tried and true classics.
“Here's the thing. There are so many f---ing kids books, and I'm gonna be honest,” Jason said to his brother. “Every rundown schmuck with a f---ing typewriter can make a children’s book these days. And I don't think that everybody should be having children's books.”
“I'm into the Dr. Seuss', the freaking three little pigs,” he continued during the episode. “I like the stories that have survived a long time, and there's a reason for these iterations existing.”
His reasoning? He wants to make sure his daughters’ bedtime stories have classic moral lessons rather than just silly stories.
“I’m out on a lot of the newer children’s books,” Jason reiterated, before explaining, “What you’re doing when you’re reading kids books is you’re hardwiring the software upstairs, right? So when you’re telling The Boy Who Cried Wolf, you’re trying to correlate ‘hey, lying makes people not trust you, and eventually that’s a bad thing to do.’”
For this reason, Jason is very selective about what he tells the girls.
“A lot of times I just end up telling those stories, or I make stories up that are [based] off of those old stories [...] Sometimes the girls will tell me they want, like, one of their stuffed animals in the story or they want to be in the story themselves,” he explained.
He then clarified that the only downside to making up his own stories with the girls and their stuffed animals as characters is that sometimes they get scared.
After a recent riff on Pinocchio featuring his daughter, Ellie, and her stuffed sloth, she was afraid the sloth could actually come to life.
“After the story, Ellie was just so terrified that she was holding [the stuffed animal],” Jason said, widening his eyes to imitate his daughter’s reaction.
His wife, Kylie Kelce, was not too pleased with the outcome of his magical tale.
“Kylie was furious. She's like, ‘What the f--- is wrong with you?’” Jason said as he and Travis laughed.
