Worried About Coronavirus? Telling Stories Calms Anxiety in the Family
Update - to support parents and children staying at home during the coronavirus outbreak, we are creating a growing list of resources intended to help ease anxiety in the home. Storytelling is a powerful tool that moderates emotions and creates connection between parent and child. This is not about repeating our stories - it is about creating your own.
As coronavirus spreads and schools close their doors, parents are feeling anxious. Social distancing and empty shelves have us gasping for normalcy. We need skills for handling the disease, but we also need tools for managing the anxiety that treads in its footsteps. Storytelling is a time-tested way to do that, and scientists have collected many of the reasons why.
Stories help us redirect and center our attention – something that is especially useful in the wake of media reports. As politicians and journalists battle for the narrative of the coronavirus, parents are engaged in a different battle – the narrative in our children’s hearts. By telling a story, we provide a common narrative for the whole family, something that young children especially need.
Best of all, storytelling is inherently soothing, not simply because of the story itself but because of the relationship at its heart. Storytelling helps a child feel seen. It is often accompanied with snuggling and the intimacy of home. And it costs nothing, requires no travel, and everyone can do it.
This article is not intended to belittle the real and sometimes tragic consequences of coronavirus or any illness. We invite you to take stock and make good choices. But if you’ve done that and you still find yourself sitting at home with your child and worrying about the next few weeks, here is a tool that calms anxiety, including your own.
I’ve taught kindergarten for over thirty years. Over the course of that time I’ve weathered illness in the children, illness in myself, the death of children, the death of mothers, and thousands of sun-filled days. Every year has its own challenges. Children who witness tragic events need help from their elders to make sense of the chaos. This is the exact role that storytelling has in our lives, and it’s medicine for adults too.
A few weeks ago, as the first news of coronoavirus was just breaking out, I was outside greeting parents and children as they pulled up to school. It was a cold day in February, and coughs, colds and flus had been weaving their way through my kindergarten, per usual. That morning, I had received several texts from a mother with a little boy who was worried about coming to school, and over the weekend I had learned that another child’s sibling has a rare genetic disease.
As I greeted the children that morning, one mother looked worried. Another looked guilty. Her little boy Andrew coughed in short, raspy bursts. “He’s been fine all weekend,” she said, “there’s just this lingering cough.”
I could feel the anxiety in the parents. Most of it was just the normal stress of the cold and flu season, but the recent talk of coronavirus had raised the stakes. The truth is, I was a little nervous. Sickness is real and can strengthen a child, but it can also become scary and overwhelming. As I surveyed the kids, the parents, and myself, I made a last-minute change.
“Oh, dear children,” I announced at morning circle, “you would not believe who I met on my morning walk today.” The kids looked up curiously. “It was old man Cough and Sneezer.” I shook my head pathetically. “They looked at me and hoped to get a ride. But I said, ‘Oh no! I don’t have room for you two. My pockets are full.’”
The children eyeballed each other, wondering where the story was going. A couple giggled. Andrew coughed, then smiled. There’s something about the way a story can help a child feel seen.
“I watched them head up north and sneak into the house of a little boy. Old man Cough jumped on the boy’s chest and Sneezer tickled his nose. They had so much fun they decided to stay for a whole week! But the mother was not intimidated, and she took care to make it so uncomfortable for them that they finally left for the mountains.”
Several of the kids nodded their heads excitedly. This is the first of many benefits – storytelling grabs a child’s attention and gives her something upon which to focus. After a long weekend, it helps my kids create common ground, but it is exactly what can help your family distill fragmented experiences and media into a common bond.
Practice Exercise
Ask your child to tell you a story about illness. Maybe it’s a little child or a bear that got sick, then what she had to do to get well, or what her mother or father might have done, etc. The practice is to give her complete freedom. By listening to the story, you will discover fears and strengths in your child that you might otherwise have a hard time obtaining in clear words. What stories and ideas are bothering her? What makes her feel safe? How you can use that information to keep her healthy and in good spirit? If the story is sad or heavy, what can you do to help her transform it?
“Once they got to the mountains, old man Cough and Sneezer found a bear cave. The bear was not pleased to be interrupted, but he told them they could stay if they would sleep on the osha pillow [osha is an immune-boosting herb found in the mountains that is used by both people and bears in this region]. Well, this was not a pleasant place for a Cough, and old man Sneezer felt so uncomfortable that both of them hid in the corners of the cave and quickly became invisible.
“Soon after, some fever fairies came dancing by. They had followed the footsteps of old man Cough and Sneezer. ‘Please, may we stay?’ they asked. The bear opened one eye and said, ‘Only if you don’t heat up the cave. I like to sleep in the cold!’
“Well, that was an impossible task for fever fairies, and before you knew it they had jumped around and created so much heat that the brush at the entrance had caught fire! The bear became unpleasant and growled, ‘Rowrrr!’ which scared the fever fairies, old man Cough, and Sneezer right out of the cave.”
The anthropomorphization of an illness can help a child make meaning of something that otherwise eludes their understanding. It personalizes it, and makes it relatable. This is another major benefit of storytelling. “Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none,” says a recent article in The Atlantic, “because it can afford meaning to our lives.”
Why is this? Scientists have been piecing together a theory of storytelling for decades. What they’ve learned is that storytelling helps us remember information, focus our attention, and build empathy and trust – critical tools for social creatures like you and I.
But it’s only recently that some people have started coalescing this data into a unified theory. Far from being a novelty or entertainment, storytelling is one of the primary cognitive tools humans utilize to make sense of complex social and environmental factors. It provides focus. We see it in religions, nations, neighborhoods, and families.
“Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world,” says The Atlantic, “They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness.”
When old man Cough, Sneezer, and the fever fairies moved to another cave, it quickly grew so hot that a large fire erupted in a cloud of smoke that could be seen from the little town below. “One of the firefighters saw the smoke rising and took a small crew to investigate,” I said. One of my little girls perked up. Her father is a fireman.
“Old man Cough saw the firefighters and said, ‘Yay! Let me greet him!’ He jumped on the chest of the first fireman with such a might that the fireman tumbled backwards out of the cave and rolled down the mountain.” The kids laughed.
“The others quickly ran to his rescue, and the second fireman said, ‘I will go next.’ The fever fairies cried out, ‘Yay, this one will be ours!’ Once he entered the cave, the fairies jumped on his head, his heart, and his feet and got him so hot that he thought he would burn up. Jump-jump-jump. He too stumbled backwards out of the cave and rolled in the snow nearby to cool himself down.
“The third fireman said, ‘I am immune to fevers and coughs. I will enter.’ But he was not prepared for old man Sneezer, who sat on top of the entrance to the cave. Sneezer jumped right on the nose of the third fireman, who gave such a big, ‘Haaaaachooooooo!’ that he sneezed himself all the way down the mountain. It even blew off his moustache.
“Well my goodness, children. The firemen gathered together and the fourth one said, ‘I think we should go home and drink some hot tea and eat chicken soup.’ They all agreed and Sneezer, old man Cough, and the fever fairies were so tired that they went back into the cave and fell asleep for many a month!”
“My mom makes chicken soup!” one little boy shouted. Others were chuckling. Andrew coughed.
When we think about storytelling, we usually think of the story. This is an important element, but I encourage you to focus instead on the relationship that forms between speaker and listener. Anyone can see that the story I told didn’t give us any leverage over the real illnesses we were fighting – it gave us a common thread, a bond. This is what you can create for your family with a story about coronavirus.
It can be easy to get overwhelmed by illness. There’s no question that this outbreak requires a serious response. We love our kids. We want them to be healthy. But if we’ve done our due diligence, then we need more than toilet paper and hand-washing skills. We need something that can bring us together amidst the chaos, give us a collective sense of meaning, and maybe even bring some levity into our day.
This is the exact role that storytelling plays in the human organism.
We encourage you to get creative and make up your own stories about coronavirus. Storytelling is a skill that lies deep inside you. Your genes predispose you to it. Your ancestors worked it out for you, and it remains one of the most potent tools we have to create shared meaning. A cute video or story from a professional doesn’t hurt, but nothing will replace the intimacy of an authentic story from mom or dad.
If you feel intimidated by the thought of telling your own story, feel free to borrow old man Cough or Sneezer. We also created a simple story more directly related to coronavirus. Use them as inspiration, but we think you’ll find it much more engaging if you come up with stories of your own.
Announcing the 2020 Coronavirus Storytelling Challenge
As politicians and journalists wrestle for control over the story of coronavirus in the media, parents are locked down in a different battle – the story forming in our children’s hearts.
Schools are closing their doors. Parents are feeling anxious. Social distancing and empty shelves have us gasping for normalcy. We need skills for handling the disease, but we also need tools for managing the anxiety that treads in its footsteps.
That’s why we created the 2020 Coronoavirus Storytelling Challenge. As the nation struggles to catch up with the disease, let’s help parents and children connect at home, and take some of the pressure off.
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, authors of How to Tell Stories to Children. Originally published in August of 2019, a new edition is due out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2021. You can find more from Joseph Sarosy at Fatherly. Are you interested in storytelling? Join Us.