Does your child have wax in her ears? Perhaps that’s why she isn’t listening. Or, perhaps that’s a line you should use when she isn’t listening to your instructions. Michaeleen Doucleff writes about using this kind of language in her book, Hunt, Gather, Parent. Basically, she’s sharing the wisdom she learned from Inuit parents, which is to swap out anger and scolding with storytelling when directing and disciplining a child. It seems to work well. (If you’re interested in the topic, but don’t have time for the book right now, check out her article on anger and Inuit parenting. The images are beautiful, too.)

In her research about Inuit parenting she writes about the use of storytelling to discipline children. I wasn’t sure about her idea of telling children that there’s a monster in the water. Trying to protect children from drowning is important, but it seemed to me that truth telling is also important. I sat with this a little bit and came to the conclusion that talking about a monster in the water is appropriate. A river has a current and that certainly is a monster that can carry a child away. Water with no current can pull a child down and certainly the water could be considered a monster in that situation. 

I posted recently on the difference between Truth vs fact. People throughout history have used story and narrative to tell deeper truths. I think about this in terms of faith and how Jesus spoke truth to his followers without emphasizing facts. In Michaeleen’s writing she notes that in her research on Inuit parenting she “learned more about humanity’s intricate relationship with storytelling.”

She goes on to say: Oral storytelling is what’s known as a human universal. For tens of thousands of years, it has been a key way that parents teach children about values and how to behave.

Modern hunter-gatherer groups use stories to teach sharing, respect for both genders and conflict avoidance, a recent study reported, after analyzing 89 stories from nine different tribes in Southeast Asia and Africa. With the Agta, a hunter-gatherer population of the Philippines, good storytelling skills are prized more than hunting skills or medicinal knowledge, the study found.

Today many American parents outsource their oral storytelling to screens. And in doing so, I wonder if we’re missing out on an easy — and effective — way of disciplining and changing behavior. Could small children be somehow “wired” to learn through stories?

So, I am prepared to use storytelling to keep our daughter safe. But I noticed the other night that stories can be used for more than just disciplining.

Our child was fussing (angry?) and didn’t want to lie down so I talked with her about what we did during the day and she calmed down. It wasn’t immediate, but it was like magic. Between her crying I would make small comments like, “do you remember what we made for supper tonight?” She’d pause a little bit, cry a little bit and then at another break in her fussing I’d add to my words. “You watched me whisk the milk around in the pan, didn’t you?” She stopped and listened. She looked like she was going to cry but I kept narrating. “We whisked in the cheese then, didn’t we? And when Dada came home we all ate together. You liked that food didn’t you?” She’d nod her head and maybe look like she was going to cry again, but I’d just keep going. And it worked! I didn’t get angry and her displeasure dissipated. Eventually she laid down her head and just listened to me narrating the day. Beautiful. (Shew!)

After reading Doucleff’s writing on Inuit parenting I think differently about anger – in myself and in her. I used to think anger was good and it was ok to express it. Now I’m questioning that tendency in our culture. Do we really need to express it? Is there any way of redirecting our frustration? Is it actually good to help children get in touch with their emotions and talk about their anger when we could be teaching them to find their equilibrium?

These are genuine questions for me, but I have to say that my initial buy into the trend of tapping into our emotions is wavering. I’m not saying it’s all wrong, just that I think we should be wary and open to learning from others – in this case it’s from people way up north, in an area of the world that few people enter and whose voices are rarely heard. If they have wisdom to offer, let’s listen, but perhaps we should check our ears for wax first.