What are childhood narratives?
Our earliest experiences—roughly the first five years of our life—have a profound effect on us because they are our first experiences. It’s like we’re born with a blank slate and these experiences create our understanding of how things work. That’s essentially what childhood narratives are: they’re stories about ourselves and others that become the basis of our lifelong beliefs.
For example, here are a few common narratives that people carry inside them:
- I’m not good enough.
- It’s my job to make others happy.
- I need to watch out because the world is an unsafe place.
Narratives can also carry positive messages:
- I’m loveable.
- I’ll probably succeed if I work at it.
- The world is a tough place, but I can handle it.
Regardless of the message, narratives are the building blocks that tell us who we are, who others are, and what we can expect of the world.
The amazing and terrifying thing about narratives is that they form in our earliest years when we are especially prone to misunderstanding what’s happening and why. Based on how our young mind works, we create narratives that may not be accurate, true, or healthy.
Because they form at such a young age, narratives are generally invisible to us. Yet they influence—and often determine—every decision we ever make.
If narratives sound like a big deal, you’re right: they are. And if you’re also wondering why, if they’re such a big deal, no one has been talking about them, you’d be right in asking. When we understand what narratives are and how they form, we can help our kids both develop healthy narratives and undo harmful ones.
How narratives form
Let’s break it down into the basics:
- Something happens
- The child has some feelings about it
- They try to make sense of what’s happened
- Based on their feelings and understanding of the event, they make up a story—or narrative—about how things generally work
You’re probably not too surprised by any of this. But let’s look more closely at the steps.
Step #1 is pretty basic—something happens. It doesn’t matter what. But something is always happening, especially with little kids! It only starts to get complicated with the next steps.
Step #2—the child’s feelings—sounds obvious enough, but it often gets overlooked. Narratives grow out of the feelings we have in response to some event or experience. Based on those feelings, we build expectations of what will happen in the future. This, too, isn’t very surprising. But when it comes to young children who have a limited understanding of their world, they can easily create inaccurate and even harmful narratives about themselves and others.
For example, let’s say I’m an eighteen-month-old and I’ve discovered the cat’s tail. It’s soft, it fits perfectly in my hand, and it seems to be connected to a cat, which itself is such a curious thing. I yank on the tail to run the tip across my cheek.
You know what’s going to happen: I’m going to get scratched, and hopefully it will only be my hand. I’ll naturally be surprised, hurt, and scared that such a wonderfully soft thing causes such pain.
Combining the experience with my emotions, a narrative will form, something along the lines of cats are scary, unpredictable, and dangerous creatures.
We could draw it this way:
Incorporating Step #3
The above example is fairly straightforward. Now, let’s look at one which is more complex, and which includes Step #3, a child’s making sense of what’s happened.
Imagine a family with two children: a healthy three-year-old and a newborn with life-threatening health issues.
As the two parents are dealing with their enormous stress and fears, how might the three-year-old experience all this?
The three-year-old will feel their parents’ being distracted, if not absent. The child will try to make sense of what’s happening (Step #3), but they won’t be able to intellectually appreciate the position their parents are in. As a result, the child is going to feel jealous, angry, and somewhat forgotten.
In these situations, it’s common for the child to tell themselves they’re not important enough to get the parents’ attention. Of course, this doesn’t make sense, but it’s based on the kid’s limited intellect.
We can now revise the diagram this way, which incorporates Step #4, developing a narrative:
Using the example above, let’s recreate the narrative for this three-year-old:
This three-year-old will likely continue to feel left out, given the high needs of their infant sibling. If the parents do not actively address both the child’s feelings and their misperceptions, it’s likely the child will believe they aren’t worth much.
Feelings and the narratives they produce are complicated, especially with very young children. But know this: kids do make sense once we understand their little-brain ways of (mis)perceiving things and the universal ways young minds work.
(For more on kids and narratives, check out my key post, “The Most Common Harmful Narratives in Children.” And for more on how narratives affect kids, check out the short-short story, “Full Lockdown,” about a young boy’s resulting narratives after witnessing a tragic death.)
Related Posts
The Narratives Others Hand Down to Us
Sometimes we pass down unhealthy narratives to our children without realizing it. Here’s how to recognize and prevent this from happening.
The Most Common Harmful Narratives in Children
A list of common harmful narratives children develop, why they develop these narratives, and how you can keep the narratives from forming.
The 7 Key Ways a Child’s Mind Works
To understand kids—and respond to their behavior—we have to understand how a child’s mind works. This post reveals the mysteries.
How To Prevent Harmful Narratives in Your Child
It’s not hard to undo harmful narratives in children. Here are specific strategies to help kids form lasting, healthy narratives.
Full Lockdown
A school lockdown triggers a surprising response from a student.
(mis)Perceptions: The Reason Young Kids Have So Much Trouble
Because young children misunderstand and misperceive things, they can create harmful narratives that can last a lifetime. Here’s how to prevent this.
3 thoughts on “Childhood Narratives: How They Impact Kids for a Lifetime”
All this makes a lot of sense but it’s not something you hear about. The more I think about it the more I realize how much narratives have been affecting everything i do. A lot here to think about. Thanks
I’ve been thinking about my own narratives that formed when I was little and how they keep coming back over and over and getting in my way. I’ve been working on this in my own therapy and I’ve found it’s been really helpful, though the narratives don’t really ever go away, or just not yet. It’s more like I feel the narrative come back and I want to act on the old narrative, but then I can stop myself and tell myself it’s just the past sneaking into the present. It’s ongoing, hard work, but it’s made my life a whole lot better.
Thanks for discussing this here. It’s important and I don’t see it come up in other parenting sites.
This piece is so helpful! Thank you. It’s something I’d always felt but never been able to put into words.