For thousands of years, the Inuit have raised children in one of the harshest places on Earth. During that time, they've developed a suite of powerful parenting tools to teach children emotional intelligence, especially when it comes to anger.
At the center of these tools is a major tenet: Never shout at small children.
"Yelling? There was no yelling at kids [in traditional Inuit culture]," says Martha Tikivik, 83, who was born in an igloo and has six children.
In fact, there's no reason for a parent to get angry at a small child, Tikivik says: "Anger has no purpose. It's not going to solve your problem. It only stops communication between the child and the mom."
OK. I admit that following this advice was really hard. I mean really, really hard. It took weeks of practice (and another trick I learned about anger). At first, I just stopped saying anything to Rosy when she had a tantrum or hit me. I knew that if I opened my mouth, the words would be tinged in anger. So I would just close my eyes to calm myself down and then wait for Rosy to calm down herself.
Then after she calmed down, I took inspiration from the Inuit moms and turned discipline into fantasy and theater.
Storytelling has definitely decreased the yelling, nagging and blown fuses in our home. But the stories didn't stop the hitting. For that, I needed inspiration from another Inuit strategy, which anthropologist Jean Briggs studied for more than 30 years ago.
To read more of Michaeleen Doucleff's article, please click here.
To read Michaeleen Doucleff's original article, "How Inuit Parents Teach Kids to Control Their Anger" on our Native Americans community, please click HERE.
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