STORYTELLING FOR PARENTS; PARENTING / DISCIPLINE STORIES
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) Here's an article on storytelling for parents. Linda Lodding, a writer for GeoParents website interviewed Peninah Shram and me for an article on storytelling for parents. To see the full article on the GeoParent website, visit
http://geoparent.com/family/techniques/storytellingstrategies.htm

2) There is a Sufi story, The Buried Treasure, in which a dying father tells his three lazy sons that he has left a treasure buried somewhere on his land, but does not tell them where - only that they must dig carefully. The boys dig and dig in field after field and then realize that as long as they have dug, they may as well plant. They do so and their crop grows well. They continue in this way, year after year until they have grown accustomed to the cycle of the seasons and the rewards of daily labor. By this time their farming activities have earned them enough to live well and they realize the real treasure their father has left them.

If you have time to get to a bookstore or a library, you might want to check out The Barefoot Book of Mother and Son Tales. I think there are also Father and Son, Mother and Daughter, Father and Daughter anthology in that series.

3) Another story about disciplining and parenting just popped into my head: Little Eight John, an African American folktale which you can find in Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly. You can have a great deal of fun with this story. Little Eight John is a handsome little boy who tests every piece of admonition his mother gives him: She tells him not to do various things which will bring bad luck on the family and he inevitably disobeys:

Different versions have different prohibitions:
Don't squash frogs and toads
Don't sit backwards in a chair
Don't count your teeth
Don't sleep with your head at the foot of the bed
Don't wake up with the Sunday moans and the Monday groans

On this last, she warns him that Old Raw-Head Bloody Bones, the spirit of someone dead, will come for him. Sure enough, he moans on Sunday and groans on Monday and that night, when he's sleeping with his head at the foot of the bed, Old Raw-Head Bloody Bones snatches him up, turns him into a grease spot and leaves him on the kitchen table. Next morning, his mother sees that grease spot, wipes it up with a cloth and rinses it down the kitchen sink. And that was the end of Little Eight John and that's what happens to all naughty children who do not mind their mamas!

4) A mother once told a friend how her own mother had taught them to be thorough when they cleaned. "She would hide dollar bills in the room I was assigned to clean. If I found them, I could keep them." Her daughter, who was listening, said, "Mother, what a great idea! Why didn't you do that for me?" "I did," her mother replied.

5) The Story of "I, Libertine"(about Jean Shepard) may be found at:
http://www.bobkaye.com/ilibertine.html

(This web page updated 8/9/03)