When I first arrived, I had been helping the boys practice their self-regulation by asking them to practice being slow-motion puppies, but as more children arrived, the noise level increased and I sensed that their central nervous systems had moved them dangerously close to the point of let’s-all-run-and-scream. I put my pen down and joined them under their dark green sheet.

“Once upon a time…” I said, and stopped to lift the sheet and make room for two other children who had overheard the beginning of the story.

“…there was a dark cave…and in the cave, there were…little bats…”

“Once upon a time” is the easy part when you’re attempting to use a story to influence the behavior of young children. I’m always looking for words to guide, suggest and nudge, but the equation of self-regulation in a room full of young children contains hundreds of variables. The only known quantity is that it works better if you have a relationship with the children, preferably one where they see you as someone who is fair, kind, trustworthy and, of course, firm when necessary. It isn’t easy (working with young children almost never is), but using stories usually is more effective than issuing commands repeatedly. Young children live in stories, and when you can join them there and attempt to speak the language, interesting things can happen.

After “once upon a time” the next step is to choose an object in the children’s immediate purview and connect it to a behavior you’re hoping to modify. Under the dark green sheet/cave, the children’s voices were loud and shrill so I added that to the story.

“We have to be quiet so we don’t wake up the baby bats.”

“They’re my bats.” This came immediately from one of the older boys, who had come to school wearing a Batman cape that morning. When a child likes your suggestion, that’s a sign you may be on to something. It also makes the next part of the story easy to tell.

“Yeah, they’re Batman’s bats,” I agreed.

And then, because Ms Sparkly Feet and I had been engaged in an ongoing debate about the telling of stories, I brought in her shoes.

“And it was dark in there, and they couldn’t see, until the little girl put her sparkly shoes inside and…oh look, now we can see in the cave!”

And for the briefest of moments, silver shoes and imaginary bats captured the children’s imaginations. And then their need to yell boo came back. A week later I spent some time with a 14-month-old who was thrilled with every peek-a-boo variation we could come up with me, and suddenly I found myself wondering about Peek-a-boo and the Hierarchy of Needs. If children don’t play peek-a-boo when they’re between the ages of 1 and 2 years, do they feel compelled to do so when they’re three, until some invisible quota has been satisfied?

I wonder.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Befalling (Part 1)
Here we set some goals and offer back-ground information about young children and story. We talk about the 3 tasks of early childhood and use buttons to illusrate how teaching saves time! Then we show you children telling stories during play followed by adults using story to co-construct a curriculum. Vivian Paley takes story dictation; Steve Elm starts out on a problem-solving trip to Kenya; Petra Gonzales and her children visit an imaginary pumpkin patch; and Kristin Eno begins the story of a school year she spent videotaping stories in Brooklyn.