It’s late summer. I’m
wandering around the garden – I call it a garden, but it’s really more of an
enclosed yard, bounded with ancient hedges and whiskery hawthorn where the sun
never reaches, and spiders, slugs and other animals lurk in the perennial dusk. My three-year old son is crouched in a corner
like a frog, knees almost level with his ears, talking and gesticulating excitedly
to himself. As I pass him, a dull squidgy crunch echoes underfoot.
“NOOO MUMMY!” Benjy’s horrified voice erupts from behind me.
“You’ve TRODDEN on the SNAIL!”
I lift my foot. Underneath
my shoe is a greeny-grey globule, peppered with shards of smashed black and brown
shell, out of which a colourless ooze trickles dismally.
Benjy peers at it anxiously. “You’ve hurt him, Mummy. You’ve hurt him really bad.”
Quickly I take a leaf and scrape the snail carcass onto the
wall. Benjy scrambles up to see. The smashed
gastropod lies pitifully in the sunlight. Desperately I wish a passing bird would
swoop down and carry it off, but no such luck.
“Mummy, you need to Sellotape him. He’s got a hurt on his
shell.”
I turn and look at Benjy. Huge blue eyes look back at me trustingly.
He’s on safe ground here. Mummy knows how to patch a book together with Sellotape,
stitch buttons back on shirts and Velcro onto trainers. For him this is just
another adventure but frankly, kid, this is beyond me, and even the most
experienced surgeon.
“Mumm-MEE!” Benjy sees
the look on my face, and realises the situation’s serious. He’s starting to escalate. Then I see – joy of joys – another speckled
shell nestling in the shadowy crevice of a brick wall.
“Sellotape! That’s a really good idea, sweetheart. Why don’t you go into the house and get me a
roll?”
Benjy turns and bolts into the house for the craft box – he knows
where it’s kept – and quickly I flick Snail 1 into the bushes and switch it for
its mightily surprised body-double Snail 2. Moments later Benjy arrives, waving
the Sellotape roll, and I bite off a large piece and stick it ostentatiously
onto the new snail.
“There we are, sweetie.”
Benjy peers at it suspiciously – the substituted snail is darker
in colour and even to his three-year-old eyes the transformation from shattered
road accident to gleaming new model is, frankly, excessive – but as two little
horns start to emerge from its shell and wave around reprovingly, a smile
lights up his face. “Well done, Mummy, he’s all better now!”
Later I’m putting him to bed when a little voice emerges
from the shadows.
“Mummy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Can you tell me the story of the Sellotape Snail?”
I can see the questions forming in his little brain. What
had happened to the snail? Had he done the right thing? Would the snail
be all right? If the snail was – or was not – all right, what were the
implications for him as a little boy in a huge wide world filled with random
and sometimes incomprehensible events? The idea of a story simply finishing – to
a child who simply exists in the moment and has only the loosest understanding
of time – is inconceivable.
The power of story to modify expectations of behaviour or
help children through transition periods and outline for them what to expect
has developed rapidly over the last twenty years since
Carol Grey developed the
concept of social stories. Social stories – simple written stories, illustrated
with pictures or in comic strip form – are often written for children with
autism or behavioural issues so that they can learn about events, reactions and
the emotions of other people as well as themselves. According to primary school reading specialist Tiffany Jean-Baptiste:
“As adults, it’s very easy for us to understand why things happen, but for
children it’s not so clear. Social stories explain, in a very supportive way,
what the situation is, why the situation is the way it is, what the child is
expected to do, and how people will feel if they do the right thing or the
wrong thing.” So for example, Lydia, who is having trouble sitting down in
class, would read: “My name is Lydia. I have trouble sitting down in class. All
my friends come to school to learn. If I don’t sit down then they can’t learn
and they will get upset with me. If I sit down then they will be happy with me
and I will be happy too.”
In the traditional sense of stories then, children also
learn empathy towards others and details about experiences that they have never
had; it’s a safe way of rehearsing events in case a similar situation should
ever happen. Deep inside us we all have a psychological need for story – for our
own narratives and sense of meaning in life; the literary devices of sympathetic
hero, the challenge, the struggle and resolution/ return are all part of our
deep innate need to empathise and learn. According
to Peter Guber, writer and producer (
The
Kids Are All Right, Bernie, Rain Man, The Color Purple), "
stories are not just a form of entertainment, they’re the highest form of consciousness." Stories are the reason that we have survived as a species, because they make us
understand ourselves in a way that pure information and logic cannot. Stories
are easier to remember than facts, and give us the framework to understand our world. Stories aren’t an accessory to real life, they ARE real life. The
power of story is “unlocked by our [brain’s] ability to form mental
representations of our experiences. Mental representations allow us to simulate
events, to enjoy the experiences of others, and to learn from them, without
having to endure all experiences ourselves.”
Amazingly, according to Guber’s informative article, it
appears that storytelling is not even simply a social or a literary device, it’s
actually the way our brains function. In general, the brain is packed with
small localised processors – governing motor control, different emotions,
cognitive representation, vision, etc – but with no “central command post”.
Instead, events are experienced at the neural level as discrete segmented
pieces of information. A processor in the left hemisphere of the brain interprets
all these millions of pieces of sensory data and is our “built-in-storyteller”,
forming rationalisations on external events based on interpreting the information
and synthesising it into a story. It generates explanations using actions,
perceptions and memories, resulting in the sense of psychological unity and a subjective
sense of oneself as a person. We create ourselves through stories – we literally
become our own stories using our brain’s own narrative.
So, with sufficient prompting from Benjy, a tale emerges.
“AJ the snail – (yes, I know) – was on his way to visit his
three cousins behind the Terrible Trees. He was very tired and he sat down for
a rest. Then one of the Big People came, whose name was Mummy The Snail Smasher,
and trod on him. AJ’s shell was broken
and he was very sad and cried because it hurt. But Benjy the little boy had
seen his accident and wanted to help him get better. So Benjy ran all the way
to get some Sellotape and put it on AJ’s shell to mend it. AJ was very happy because
he could go and visit his cousins, and Benjy was very happy too because he had
made a new friend.”
So it is that the Tale of the Sellotape Snail, along with The
Day I Got Lost At The Supermarket For Five Minutes and My Little Brother Daniel
(Breaks My Jigsaws) are still favourite bedtime stories for Benjy, just as much as The Gruffalo and The Way Back Home.
And the next time someone asks me why I make up stories for a living, I shall tell them that making up stories is in fact the highest form of consciousness!
Have you ever used the power of story with your little ones? (or indeed, your not-so-little-ones?) Let me know how!
