A personalized story about going out — the jacket, the hat, the pram and the front door, with your child as the hero of their own way outside.
A personalized picture book in which your child is the hero — and masters this challenge themselves. The first story is free.
Create This StoryTwenty minutes of dressing for ten minutes outside — most families with a small child know that arithmetic. The second sleeve never goes on, the hat comes off faster than you can pull it down, and the moment everyone is finally zipped up, someone needs a fresh nappy. By the time the front door closes behind you, you are warm, slightly cross, and still have to get the pram down the steps.
For your child, none of this is stalling. Being dressed means being handled: arms lifted into sleeves they cannot see, a hat pressed over ears, something tight around the chin. Then the door opens and the world changes all at once — cooler air on the cheeks, wind that pushes, brighter light, the noise of the street, a smell that was not there in the hallway. That is a lot of information for a body that is still new, and a body that is still new sometimes protests at the hat because the hat is the part it can reach.
This is where a book helps — not by explaining, but by putting the way outside in order. A going-out story for a child under two has no plot: it is a stretch of an ordinary day, one thing after another — the jacket, the shoes, the hat, the door, the pram, the tree, the puddle, the way home, the jacket off again. Read a few times, it becomes a sequence your child recognises, and while you read it you point and name — shoe, door, wind, dog — which is exactly the work a child of this age is busy with anyway.
In the personalized story from MagicalStory, the child pushing the door open is your own child, with their face on every page, on your street, in your park, past the fountain you actually walk past. Your child points at themselves in the pram, at their own red jacket, at the pigeons — and an hour later the same things are really there. You can try the first story for free.
A few things that help in everyday life: dress in the same order every time and say what comes next out loud, so the hat is announced instead of arriving. Put the hat on last, right before the door. Let your child carry one thing themselves, even a glove. And on the days it simply will not work, the balcony, the stairwell or five minutes at the front door is also going outside.
Daily rhythm, first words for clothes and weather, body awareness while being dressed, curiosity outdoors, transitions between inside and outside
0-2 years
Put it on last, right at the door, so it has the shortest possible time to be interesting. Announce it with the same short sentence every time instead of arriving from behind with it. And give the hands something else to hold in that moment — a glove, a key ring, the pram strap. Many children stop pulling once the hat has become part of a known order rather than a surprise.
Yes. Long before the first word, children look, point and hear the word that goes with the picture. A book that shows the way outside in the order it really happens gives your child the words for jacket, door and wind while they are still only listening — and gives the whole procedure a shape they can expect, which is what makes it easier to sit still for the second sleeve.
It is one of the most ordinary scenes at this age. A small child lives in the thing they are doing right now and cannot yet picture what comes after it, so the end of the walk feels like something being taken away. It helps to end the same way every time — one last round of the fountain, then the pram — and to have the end of the walk already in the book, so the way home is a page your child knows rather than a verdict.
Both, plainly and without drama. Most days of a Swiss year are not sunny, and a book in which grey, wet and windy are simply what the day looks like makes those days ordinary rather than a disappointment. Rain boots, a puddle, a hood going up — shown once on a page, they arrive outside as something already known.
The story is built around your child and the details you give when you create it — whether you take the pram or walk, who comes along, the park, the fountain, the shop on the corner, the dog you always meet. The closer the book stays to the walk you really take, the more your child recognises on the page and then again outside, and at this age recognition is the whole point.
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