Remember the end of The Wizard of Oz, when Glenda, the good witch, asks Dorothy what she had learned on her journey. Dorothy says, “I guess I learned that when you want and desire your heart’s desire but can’t find it, then maybe it’s in your own backyard and you really lost it to begin with.”
The ideas that many parents want their children to embrace, such as cooperation, kindness, or honesty, can be the most difficult concepts for parents to convey. In the blink of an eye, young people see a conference approaching and quickly mentally withdraw, leaving a black expression that almost every parent recognizes with a sigh.
Fortunately, “in their own backyard”, parents already have a strategy that is fully capable of conveying these messages effectively to prepared and open ears. I invite you to rediscover a secret weapon that you have always had, and to which young people have always responded, history.
An ancient treasure
In these days of “virtual-this” and “electronic-that,” there are those who might relegate storytelling to the dusty realm of a bygone era. Yet the storytelling remains strongly embedded in our human cultural experience after all those years. We see it emerge in many ways. From advertisers ‘sales pitches to speeches by public figures, to broadcasters’ fervent promise of “More on that story after our commercial hiatus …”
Among children, however, the narrative has an even stronger and deeper magic. In fact, children seem to demand stories just as insistently as they are hungry for attention or food.
Transfixed by stories
Parents around the world will attest to the phenomenon of children and stories. The magical opening, “Once upon a time …” or “Many years ago …” will focus the young eyes that, just now, had been flying aimlessly across the ceiling. Informal event openings like, “Here’s a story I heard today that you might like …” or “Did you hear the story about …?” bring dangling, impatient feet to freeze mid-swing. A child absorbed in the travels of a wandering fruit fly directs all his attention to the narrator of the story. The feeling of concentration is palpable.
As a Girl Scout leader, I was once hauling a truck full of surprisingly raucous 6-year-old Brownies. Three times I stopped the car to reprimand the criminals for fighting, yellowing, shooting, hitting. It was all in vain. Lost, I inserted a fairy tale CD. Instantly, the entire carriage calmed down. The would-be hooligans remained completely immobile until the story was finished, at which point they almost instantly went back to mischief. The next story began, and once again a silence replaced the chaos.
Why do stories capture children’s attention? On the one hand, the pattern of stories (a beginning-middle-end) establishes a structure that children recognize and understand. The ending is sure to be satisfying: the triumph of the youngest of three children, the tackling of impossible tasks, the glory of a troubled romance arranged. Popular themes in fairy tales demonstrate to children, as Bruno Bettleheim says in his classic study The uses of enchantment, “that a struggle against serious difficulties in life is inevitable”, but that if one faces difficulties, “he will overcome all obstacles and in the end he will be victorious.”
In fact, children seem to respond well to any story that offers magic or fantasy, perhaps because, being young, they live more closely with the outer worlds of magic and fantasy. When my oldest daughter was 4 1/2 years old, she had started the morning with a small hole in her pants that at the end of the day exposed most of her knee. “That hole is getting so big,” I warned him, “you’re going to fall into it soon.” “Are you kidding!” she said with a chuckle, and then she looked directly at me – “right?” As children enter elementary school, their personal sense of time and place heightens, but the world of magic and the land of stories draws to the frontiers.
Contemporary stories from modern life can also capture powerful claims in a child’s heart when the story features the child, family members, friends, or other people the child knows. Openings like, “Did I tell you the story of your wild grandfather Louis, who made the whole town panic when …” or “I’ll never forget what happened when you were just learning to walk and …?” the attention of a child due to the personalized nature of the story.
Add to all the factors the experience of listening to a story, that is, the voice of a narrator, the impact of direct eye contact, the entertainment quality of hand gestures, facial expressions, improvisations, and dramatic reactions to events. in the story, and it’s no wonder kids are mesmerized by the stories.
The simple fact that stories reliably capture children’s attention creates a unique and meaningful opportunity for parents. While young people often respond reluctantly, if not openly rebellious, to direct instructions from parents on how to behave, those same children will receive and absorb the same ideas when they are woven into a story.
As a parent, what scenario do you prefer? Relate instructions to a child whose expression dares to say: “Whatever you are selling, I am not buying it!”. Or to offer those same instructions to a child whose expression says, “Really? Tell me more. Now.”
While we can agree that stories are a powerful conduit, it is also clear that stories by themselves do not necessarily convey positive messages. In fact, stories can just as easily convey negative messages, and they often do. Imagine that a story is a form of transportation, a kind of express vehicle. Its content can be crisp fresh apples or its content can be boxes of explosives. The content that is uploaded to the “storytelling express at the beginning of your journey will determine what is received at your destination. As a parent, your role is to upload worthwhile messages in your storytelling express and send them to your destination: the heart of your kid.
