It Wasn't Me - How Storytelling Can Help A Child Speak Honestly
“It wasn’t me!” shouted one of the boys.
“It wasn’t me!” shouted another.
“I didn’t do it,” said one of the girls.
Everyone in the classroom froze. It was midweek in my kindergarten and I had just discovered that someone had snuck into a bag of candy I had put aside for Sarah’s birthday. At first I was angry. I had my usual suspects. But in thirty years of teaching kindergarten, I had encountered these kinds of things before. So, I breathed.
As I listened to the shouts of denial and saw the tension building in each child’s face, I decided to defuse the pressure with a little story. Like a mother, I loved these kids. They had made a mistake. I wanted them to learn, to be honest, but I didn’t want them to feel isolated or ashamed. Even if we got to the bottom of it, I knew that blame or shame would only drive a wedge between us.
“Has anyone seen this bag of candy?” I asked. “Somehow I found it empty in the pantry.” I was greeted with blank stares.
It was a sunny day, so I led the kids outside into the shade of a large willow tree. I knew that simply changing the location would be a helpful start. Sometimes just the open sky can make a huge difference. After each little boy and girl had sat down, I found a spot between two roots, and began.
“Let me tell you a story,” I said. “A long time ago I was a little girl, just like you. One day near Christmas, my friends and I found a bag full of candies in my grandmother’s pantry. Sweets were very rare in those days and so precious that we only got them on special days like Christmas or birthdays.”
The children looked at each other with strange faces, a little curious. I could see that we had already reduced the tension.
“One of my friends,” I continued, “said, ‘I love candies so much! You have to give me one or I won’t be your friend anymore. Or, I’ll die!’ Now, I didn’t think he would die…” As I spoke, I looked the kids in the face and I could see one or two smiling, “but I didn’t want to lose my friend either. So I said, ‘But my grandmother will be mad at me.’
“The other friend said, ‘Just tell her that there was a mouse in the pantry that came and ate them.’ ‘But a mouse can’t eat all of them,’ said my other friend. I was little, and that was the only excuse I could think of. ‘Tell her it was a whole army of mice,’ said my friend.”
“What do you think I did?” I said, looking into the eyes of the children seated under the willow tree. They shrugged their shoulders and looked at each other. I continued.
“You wouldn’t believe it, but we ate the whole bag of sweets, and then my friends went home. My belly was hurting. I don’t know if it was from the candy or from feeling bad. After dinner, Grandmother told me, ‘Today was a special day. I will let you have a candy for dessert!’
“‘Oh no!’ I said, ‘I don’t need any candy, Grandmother. Let’s wait for Christmas!’
“‘If you wish,’ said Grandmother, ‘But I will have one. Please go get the bag from the pantry.’
“Now I felt really terrible and my friends were gone. I squirmed in my seat. Then I remembered the army of mice. ‘Grandmother,’ I said, ‘I saw an army of mice take off with all of the candy just last night!’
“‘Oh, did they?’ she replied, ‘And the mouse-king must have led the army, perhaps against the rats. Is that right?’
“‘Yes, grandmother!’ I began to feel relieved. Sort of.
“‘And perhaps he needed all the candy to free the mouse prisoners from the rat kingdom?’
“Now I kind of liked the story, so I said, ‘That’s right.’
“‘But what was the war about?’ my wise old grandmother asked. I shook my head. I didn’t know. ‘Maybe the mice had told a lie,’ she said, ‘therefore the war had started. The rats wanted to know the truth or have a bag of candy as treasure.’ I shook my head. It sounded right. ‘The mouse king was afraid of the rat king,’ grandmother continued, ‘so he decided to steal it from the pantry so the rat king wouldn’t eat him up!’”
“That’s terrible,” said one of the kids under the willow tree. “I would have taken the candy too,” said another.
“Well, listen children. This is not the end. In grandmother’s story the smallest and most timid mouse had a great heart and a sword for truth. She snuck away from the army and ran to the rat king. ‘Your majesty,’ she said, falling to her knees, ‘if I tell the truth on behalf of my king, will you let the prisoners go?’
“‘Of course,’ said the Rat king, ‘but he needs to return the candies to the pantry, where he stole them, and send me a letter of apology.’
“Little timid mouse ran back to her mouse king, but all the mice of the army were lying on the ground with big bellies stuffed with candy. They were asleep! They had eaten all the candy, and now the king was desperate. Little timid mouse brought the message from the rat king. Wringing his tail, the mouse king said, ‘But I have no candy to give! It is no use even to write an apology. He will simply eat me up!’
“But timid mouse said, ‘Give me a letter of apology, and I will deliver it and offer my services for a year to the rat king.’
“‘Why would you do this brave deed?’ asked the mouse king.
“‘Because I love you, and I am not afraid, even if I look like the most timid mouse in your kingdom!’ The king blushed and felt ashamed. ‘I will go with you,’ he said to the timid mouse.
“The mouse king appeared with timid mouse before the rat king and apologized. He offered the truth and said that all the candy had been eaten. ‘All right,’ said the rat king, ‘since you deliver the truth, I offer forgiveness. But your army that ate up the candy must come and offer help in my candy factory in the upcoming month. Only then will I release your prisoners!’
“The mouse king bowed and gave his word. ‘Is your word true?’ asked the rat king.
“‘From now on it will be,’ promised the mouse king. He lifted his head and looked proudly at timid mouse, who smiled back at him.”
I paused to look at the children. Their cheeks had gone soft. Their eyes had gone soft. The tension in our classroom had vanished. We were whole again.
“After I heard grandmother’s story,” I said, “I told her the truth. I was ashamed of what I had done. I was sorry that I had eaten the candy with my friends. She smiled at me, and that made me feel so much better. I knew I had done something wrong, but I knew that my grandmother still loved me too.
“She told me to tell my friends that, like the mouse king, they needed to come and help her bake Christmas cookies that month and all would be forgiven. My heart was pounding, but I told them the next day. My friends told their parents, and they brought honey and maple syrup to bake with, for their parents had asked them to be honest too.”
I paused to look at the children under the willow tree, then asked, “What do you think we should do? Perhaps the mouse king has forgotten his promise one more time and needs help from the most timid mousling?
“I can do it,” offered one of the children, a little sheepishly. “It was my idea.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” said another, “but I went anyways,”
“I ate the most,” offered a third.
The children who had not eaten any candy were smiling too. They had sensed the trouble in the classroom, and now they felt at ease.
“Well,” I said, “I better be like the kind rat king and forgive. But you need to ask permission next time. And in order to remember, I want you all to come and help me bake cookies next week for the school bake sale.”
“I’ll bring honey!” shouted one friend. “I’ll bring maple syrup,” said another. Others offered to help with set up and clean up.
As parents and teachers, it’s inevitable that we encounter children who have done something inappropriate from time to time. If we respond with anger and judgment, children usually feel pigeonholed. This leads to evasion, often through lying. If instead we give the children a meta-narrative to explore, we take the tension away from the conflict between adult and child.
Children feel seen, not judged. At the same time, they are guided and forgiven. They have an opportunity to see the story from all sides, something that is often hard to do in personal situations. Best of all, there’s love in the story, creating room for the difficult and vulnerable work of honesty.
In this particular story, there is also a generational thread of kindness and forgiveness. Some of us might remember being beaten or scolded in such a situation. Finding ways to break that chain of violence, yet adhere to the real values we have, can feel very empowering to us as adults. Storytelling is a great way to get there.
The Storytelling Loop is a newsletter bringing you tips, science, and real-life examples of how storytelling builds the connection between parent and child. It is a joint project of Silke Rose West and Joseph Sarosy, the authors of How to Tell Stories to Children.
