How Can Storytelling Impact Children's Emotional and Moral Development?

"Let’s go to the musical Lutung Kasarung together tonight!"

Hearing that sentence from Mom, my smile immediately brightened. She knew I wanted to go to that event, remembering that my third-grade elementary school friends all went with their families to watch a musical drama popular in Bandung, Indonesia, back in 2011.

Lutung Kasarung tells the story of a beautiful princess named Purbasari from a fictional kingdom in Indonesia. Unfortunately, her stepmother cursed the beautiful princess to turn into an ugly monkey. That is where the story begins, where Purbasari, with her patience, kindness, and optimism, finally breaks the stepmother's magic and turns back into the most beautiful girl in the kingdom.

Only one word came to mind in my 8-year-old brain: "I want to be Purbasari!"

Purbasari had everything. She is a beautiful princess, inside and out. She can confidently continue to do good despite circumstances forcing her to give up. Purbasari can also sing, dance, and paint. She can do it all; she is very talented.

If Purbasari can do it, that means I can too.

After that event, I remembered precious moments from my childhood. I would spend a long time in my room dancing in front of the mirror while singing, hoping to sing a melody as beautiful as the singing of the actress Purbasari. While dancing in front of Mom, I retold the story of Lutung Kasarung. When Purbasari laughs, I will laugh. When Purbasari was sad, my expression would be painful. Having grown up in a family that was not very communicative in conveying feelings, the musical drama Lutung Kasarung helped me to be more expressive.

From there, Mom put me on the traditional Balinese dance team. I also diligently practised almost every time I came home from school. Without realising it, Balinese dance also has a unique narrative in every part of the performance. I may not have understood this then, but I now understand that stories and narratives have permeated every aspect of my life.

Little me was then taught to devote my creative talents to other things, such as painting and writing. Fortunately, my parents supported my growth, so they were the proudest in the front row when my name was called the first winner of a short story competition at my elementary school.

From these creative hobbies, I realise how story has dramatically influenced my life from childhood to entering young adulthood today. Remembering Purbasari's story, I grew up as a child who planted kindness wherever I went. Several years after the musical drama passed, a kindergarten in Jakarta invited me, now an adult, to do storytelling while teaching. Armed with my experience in art from childhood, I enthusiastically presented the story The Lorax (2012) in front of the children. We danced and laughed together, and I remember playing all the characters' voices in the storybook. We ended the learning process by singing and dancing together.

From there, my experience came into a full circle as I saw the reflection of myself as a child in the eyes of these children, who were amazed by my performance during the storytelling. Everything felt perfect that day, especially when a student named Lala approached me and said, "Because of you, I want to be a teacher when I grow up!"

Figure 1 

My teaching program #CareForChildren for kindergarteners in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Note. My storytelling and teaching experience. (2022). Own work. 

From my experience above, numerous stories have been shown to affect multiple aspects of children’s lives, including emotional development. Thoughts and feelings are visible to children through stories (Binder, 2014), as it is also a mode of knowing (Gottschall, 2012). Stories also foster connections with others and make sense of the world around children (Short & Cueto, 2023). Reflecting on my childhood, stories have strongly influenced my ability to express emotions. It guides me to normalise the plethora of emotions that arise throughout my adolescence. The feelings of sadness, pain, anxiousness, and anger were not normalised in my childhood, especially within Indonesian households, so it was challenging to communicate how I felt as a child. Fortunately, stories like Lutung Kasarung created a mental space for children like me to feel these extensive emotions. As Nikolajeva and Scott (2006) asserted, stories nurture children by facilitating them to recognise a wide variety of emotions and experience empathy. Nowadays, numerous storybooks have implemented metaphorical illustrations that portray emotions, especially non-happy ones, as a safe and regular thing to experience as children. Stories such as Today I Feel Silly & Other Moods That Make My Day (Curtis & Cornell, 1998), The Rabbit Listened (Doerrfeld, 2018), When Sadness Is At Your Door (Eland, 2019), The Way I Feel (Cain, 2000), and The Invisible String (Karst & Stevenson, 2000), are some of the examples of storybooks that help children navigate their feelings and promote emotional well-being. Furthermore, using these books to improve children’s emotional development is crucial, as narratives are regarded as a source of support and safety for those unable to exhibit their feelings explicitly (Kerry-Moran & Aerila, 2019). For instance, Where The Wild Things Are (Sendak, 2013) touches on themes such as reconciliation and anger from a unique child perspective. From this story, children found consolation in realising they were not alone in their struggles and feelings, creating a sense of improved emotional well-being. Being exposed to this type of story during my childhood, this knowledge can be an excellent alleviation for Little Jelita to feel less alone in her emotional development journey. Consequently, stories are crucial in shaping children's emotional development due to the sense of reassurance they deliver.  

Not only from the lens of emotional development, stories are also crucial to shaping positive guidance for children's behaviour in society through their moral development. The exposure of moral stories to children significantly impacts the creation of their moral character (Nurdini & Suparno, 2018). Specifically, traditional tales are introduced to children’s lives to widen their thought comprehension about a variety of different cultures and open their minds to an inclusive view of the world (Ewing, 2013). Reflecting on the character of Purbasari in the musicals, I have noticed numerous prominent positive traits from her as a child. Adding this to a layer of positive moral values delivered by Indonesian traditional folktales like Lutung Kasarung, Little Jelita learnt much about growing up courageous, generous, and optimistic. Purbasari also inspired me as a child to implement these positive traits in my immediate surroundings; thus, her character and story helped me to create this image of the ideal self in my 8-year-old self that I can always refer back to in any situation. This reflection is in line with what Watson and Berntsen (2015) have asserted about how strong memories from childhood can shape our behaviour later in life and how stories and their characters play a crucial role in creating proper social interconnection, like being generous and kind, as well as illustrating the consequences of inappropriate behaviour like cruelty and greed (Tartar, 2009). From this, stories can enlarge children’s views so that they contemplate from a safe space which action they would do in similar situations and consider moral issues beyond their experiences (Tartar, 2009; Izumi-Taylor & Scott, 2013). Consequently, stories have contributed a crucial influence on the moral development of children.

Knowing the critical impact of stories on children’s lives, we learn that children can also contribute themselves as the creators of stories. Children express their stories in ways they want to be heard (Hohti & Karlsson, 2014). As children often put themselves within the story (Niland, 2007), they use drawings, words, or active movements like dancing or acting to express themselves. As the arts become permeated in children’s lives through the activities of playing, listening, and watching a variety of contemporary media platforms such as television shows or comic books, children have been active players in utilising a wide range of storytelling methods. Through arts exposure, children can develop more robust imaginations and senses (Eisner, 2002; Niland, 2007). This is reflected in my experience as I started to write my fictional stories in elementary school. I remember this overwhelmingly exciting urge to write non-stop, trying to pour my absurd imagination through pen and paper. As a child, I did not realise how important this process was for my cognitive development as I used my brain to do more extensive critical thinking about my story plot. Furthermore, as children are actively moving (Kerry-Moran & Aerila, 2019), they interact physically with the environment around them using their bodies. Adding this to what Wright (2007) has expressed, children often rely on movements when graphics and language become inadequate for them to express themselves. As a Balinese child dancer, I remember the feeling of freedom as I moved from one dancing sequence to another. Only when I was older did I realise Balinese dancing communicates a story of life in every movement of our eyes, fingers, head, feet, and body. This reflects how story has been a prominent part of my life, especially within the context of the Indonesian culture that I grew up in. Consequently, these examples show that children actively engage in stories through various art forms. 

Based on previous reflections, it is evident that stories have influenced children’s lives in numerous aspects, such as emotional and moral development. Furthermore, with children now being exposed to a wide range of arts, they can be more flexible in combining various skills to create their own stories. Therefore, families and educators should foster environments where children are supported to express their imagination through stories, as the utilisation of stories in the context of child development has been proven to have long-term advantages in shaping their character.

References

• Binder, M. (2014). The storied lives children play: Multimodal approaches using storytelling. Journal of Childhood Studies, 39(2), 11–20. https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs.v39i2.15219

• Cain, J. (2000). The way I feel. Parenting Press.

• Curtis, J. L., & Cornell, L. (1998). Today I feel silly & other moods that make my day (1st ed). HarperCollins Publishers.

• Doerrfeld, C. (2018). The rabbit listened. Dial Books for Young Readers.

• Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. Yale University Press.

• Eland, E. (2019). When sadness is at your door (First American edition). Random House.

• Ewing, R. (Ed.). (2013). Creative arts in the lives of young children: Play, imagination and learning. ACER Press.

• Gottschall, J. (2012). The storytelling animal: How stories make us human. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

• Hohti, R., & Karlsson, L. (2014). Lollipop stories: Listening to children’s voices in the classroom and narrative ethnographical research. Childhood, 21(4), 548–562. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568213496655

• Izumi-Taylor, S., & Scott, J. C. (2013). Nurturing young children’s moral development through literature in japan and the usa. Research in Comparative and International Education, 8(1), 38–54. https://doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2013.8.1.38

• Karst, P., & Stevenson, G. (2000). The invisible string. DeVorss Publications.

• Kerry-Moran, K. J., & Aerila, J.-A. (Eds.). (2019). Story in children’s lives: Contributions of the narrative mode to early childhood development, literacy, and learning (Vol. 16). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19266-2 

• Seuss. (2012). The Lorax. New York, Robin Corey Books.

• Nikolajeva, M., & Scott, C. (2006). How picturebooks work (1st pbk. ed). Routledge.

• Niland, A. (2007). Musical stories: Strategies for integrating literature and music for young children. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 32(4), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/183693910703200403

• Nurdini, A., & Suparno, S. (2019). The influence of moral stories on the children’s giving. Proceedings of the International Conference on Special and Inclusive Education (ICSIE 2018). Proceedings of the International Conference on Special and Inclusive Education (ICSIE 2018), Yogyakarta, Indonesia. https://doi.org/10.2991/icsie-18.2019.58

• Sendak, M. (2013). Where the wild things are (50th anniversary ed). HarperCollins.

• Short, K. G., & Cueto, D. W. (2023). Essentials of children’s literature (Tenth edition). Pearson.

• Tatar, M. (2009). Enchanted hunters: The power of stories in childhood (1st ed). W.W. Norton.

• Watson, L. A., & Berntsen, D. (Eds.). (2015). Clinical perspectives on autobiographical memory. Cambridge University Press.

• Wright, S. (2007). Graphic-Narrative Play: Young Children’s Authoring through Drawing and Telling. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 8(8), 1–28. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289129419_Graphic-narrative_play_Young_children's_authoring_through_drawing_and_telling