Bedtime Stories

I'm guessing that anyone who has children has at some time told them bedtime stories and I was no different when my boys were young. I do wonder though what kind of training that gives us if we later want to get into professional fiction writing.

I'll take my own stories as an example. It was bedtime, my sons needed settling down and I didn't want them to have bad dreams. So I told them stories about the Tooth Fairy and her wonderful castle. I had memories of Enid Blyton stories as I spun a tale about my two boys visiting a wonderful land and having feasts of sausages and jelly and ice cream.

There was no tension, no plot and not even any very funny jokes: I didn't want to get them all stirred up before sleeping. (My Beloved had other ideas and used leave them rolling with laughter at tales of Humphrey Wobblebottom but that is another story altogether.) My stories were guaranteed to have the listeners dropping off to sleep. What kind of a preparation is that for fiction writing?