Power of Stories (for ‘Parenting’)

plugH Gurukul – Parents ki Paathshaala ~ a monthly series, has been designed to address issues that parents battle with in life and struggle to find answers for.

For the May 2022 session, Bharat Dash – Founder of Katha Pratha was invited as a guest speaker and he spoke about how communication happens only in the form of stories.

In fact, stories are an effective tool that can be used in parenting to drive home certain lessons which otherwise might be complex to engage with.

“The power of stories lies in how they communicate patterns of the past and possibilities of future. Images with different messages are transferred through storytelling which help build understanding of the world around us.”

These are some of the tips he gave on how stories could be used –

1. Familiarize yourselves with the story before introducing it to the child.

2. Read and reflect on the emotions each character carries in the story.

3. Narrate the story to the child while enacting the emotions in the most animate manner as possible.

4. After that, ask your child to narrate it back to check if they have got the gist of the story – were they able to pick up what you intended for them to learn from the story or not ?

5. Invite the characters outside the story and engage in dialogue with your child around these characters. This provides the child with a model to learn skills like decision-making, conflict resolution and emotional regulation.

6. Sometimes, it helps to not conclude the story in one instance but allow the child to explore different possibilities of what the end would look like. This will get their creative juices running and imagination will foster. This will also develop their critical thinking as the child will be exposed to opportunities to think and generate multiple possibilities of how the narrative will progress. It will also generate a cognitive environment for the child where more than one way exists when it comes to exposition in a story.

7. Be ready to answer their questions or even better if you ask them questions. Take a pause and ask a question. Focus and revolve questions around characters, events, and actions to get the child thinking.

8. It also helps in perspective building; the child will learn how to think from not only the protagonist’s or antagonist’s perspective but also from the lesser heard voices in the story.

“All conversations at home are stories …”

Every conversation that you have with the children or other family members are stories the children witness and listen closely. Stories from your workplace, stories about relatives, and stories about family all are transmitted to the children through our conversations.

“Every conversation that you have is a Story with its unique message”

Therefore, a few things to be careful about –

1. Be mindful of what kind of stories you share in front of the children. Because children keep developing images in their head and mould their thinking.

2. Be cautious of the core message that you are transferring. Are you telling them that people are wrong as individuals or is it their actions which at times are wrong and not up to the mark? Since, it is natural for characters to change with time; if these characters are built, focused on action, then it becomes easy to mould them as they are flexible otherwise rigid characters become challenging.

3. In addition to the above, children shouldn’t become the dumping ground for all your negative emotions. It will lead them to believe that it’s their responsibility to make you feel better. That puts unfair pressure on a child.

4. Refrain from bad mouthing about the other parent in front of your child. It affects their relationship experience with them.

5. Don’t glorify your achievements to your children neither victimize yourself in front of them. This can influence their world view in a lot of unhealthy ways.

Important Note –

Parents should make a gradual shift from being idealistic to practical. The base of their value system must be very strong – high on morals [Dharmic] like for e.g., always being honest and truthful. And then as they grow older you can introduce flexibility and practicality [Vyavaharik] in the value systems. So that it creates a right balance between ideal and practical values.

Some story references that parents could draw upon are –