Start a New Family Tradition:

The Talking Stick Fosters Community, Communication and Connection

By Sarah Suatoni, President, The Tween Scene LLC

What do the 2-6th grade girls in Tween Tribe have in common with a renowned physicist, a Native American Elder, and the cast of characters on Cheers? Each participates in practice as old as tribal people and as revolutionary as quantum physics. They sit in a circle, share their thoughts and feelings openly, and listen with attention. (Okay, including Cheers might be a stretch.) In some cultures this practice is called holding a council. In Tween Tribe we call it circle time share-up.

This year we sent the talking sticks home and invited the girls to hold a council with their families.  Whether or not your daughter is in a Tween Tribe, we encourage this practice. Try creating a new family tradition: hold council-style family meetings on a regular basis. You'll discover a wonderful way to foster communication, solve family problems and teach your child lifelong communication tools.

Quick Link: Print our kid-friendly introduction to the Talking Stick to share with your daughter.

The recipe for a council or a share-up includes three or more people, enough space to sit in a circle, enough time to hear everyone speak, and a talking stick. The circle promotes equality among the group. The stick is used to designate the speaker. Whoever holds the stick talks, all not holding the stick listen. The stick gives the speaker the power to share her thoughts and feelings without threat of interruption, instruction, judgment, or criticism.  Everyone sitting in the circle focuses his or her full attention on the speaker.

It sounds very simple, but it is actually a challenge not to interrupts with advice, agreement, or an objection. It is very difficult to have strong feelings emerge in response to something someone else shares and not blurt them out. It is hard to speak honestly with everyone looking at you. It is a challenge to listen when you have something urgent to say. And it is easy to forget what you want to say when you have to wait your turn to say it. It is a practice in honesty, patience, presence, non-judgment, memory, verbalization, and the profound experience of trying to truly take in another human being. These are all skills we want our kids to have. These are skills we probably need to work on ourselves. This simple practice can be very meaningful indeed.

Why is this important?  In the context of the Tween Tribes it teaches the girls how to articulate their thoughts and feelings while fostering listening skills. In the process, the girls build self-esteem and courage. This happens for two reasons. First, when a child shares her inner life without being criticized the deep need we all have to be witnessed is met. The more this need is met in a child the stronger her sense of self becomes.

Simultaneously, the girls hear their issues echoed in the voices of their peers. They learn that they are not alone. Children do not realize that others have similar feelings. Sometimes, just discovering that their issue is shared is a powerful experience. Basically this process teaches communication skills and helps teach children how to participate in community.  We think both these things are very important.

Communication is important because tween age kids become increasingly focused on their peers as they head towards their teens. Parents struggle to talk with their kids at exactly the time when their kids need their attention and their wisdom.  Creating rituals at home that encourage communication now will help as talking with your kids grows harder. 

Communicating with our kids is essential to their safety and well. If you watch the afterschool programming on TV you will notice that parents and adult role models are either absent or absurd.  Tween and teen children need parents and caregivers at home to stay actively engaged as mentors through these years.

The quality of communication that the talking stick ritual engenders is unique. The circle provides everyone an equal view of one and other. No one holds the position of power. This ritual is not a lecture with an expert, a desperate plea to be heard, a demand, or a placating agreement.  It is an exercise in truly listening to one and other and speaking with honesty and clarity.

When it comes to solving problems and addressing conflicts with in the family the talking stick ceremony sets a useful stage. Einstein says, “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

In this way a council is both an ancient and a revolutionary idea grounded in the belief that a community or group can address issues better together that they can as individuals.

In his book On Dialogue, Physicist David Bohm suggests that when we listen attentively to one and other and speak in an unrehearsed fashion straight from the heart we can elevate ourselves as a group. He believes it is possible to create, “a stream of meaning flowing through us and between us…. out of which some new understanding will emerge.” He calls this new understanding “the glue or cement that holds people and societies together.” (1990, p.1)

This may not happen in an initial circle sharing with your kids on whether their bedtime hour is fair, or they like their new teacher, but the action of sitting in circle and listening can strengthen a family and teach our children how to participate in community on a very meaningful level. It can help children learn to share their feelings, talk about their struggles, and listen to others and it can help adults pass on their wisdom and humanness by sharing their concerns, ideas, and stories. Children love hearing the stories of their parent’s life and being included in their parents’ world.

I have certainly had my assumptions challenged and watched my sense of righteousness crumble as I listen to the girls in Tween Tribe share their thoughts and feelings. It is an honor to practice this ritual with them. It has been a greater challenge to do it at home with my family where our mode of communication is more fixed in comfortable familiarity. But I am going to keep trying because I want to know what is in the hearts and minds of my family and I think we need to model new ways of relating to our children in order to prepare them for the complex world they live in.

Peter Senge says, “We do not know how to live together in this changing world. We only know how to live based on truths for the past, which today inevitable results in one group attempting to impose their truths on another.”  The talking stick is just a stick, but it holds the possibility of teaching our kids tolerance and understanding along with the skills of talking and listening. 

It is a practice that builds community. We at Tween Tribe believe that a strong experience of community creates a circle of support that our girls will need to thrive in this ever-changing world. Wendell Berry says, “If  [a community] hopes to continue long as a community, it will wish to--and it will have to--encourage respect for all its members, human and natural. It will encourage respect for all stations and occupations. Such a community has the power...to enforce decency without litigation. It has the power that is to influence behavior. And it exercises this power not by coercion or violence but by teaching the young and by preserving the stories and songs that tell (among other things) what works and what does not work in a given place.”

So, in the spirit of community, communication and fun, grab a stick from your yard, sit around your kitchen table and give your family a share-up session.  It might really help.