Responsibility stories

The strongest stories in this theme all hinge on a promise made carelessly and honoured expensively. Children find this fascinating long before they can explain why.

Rumpelstiltskin is the sharpest of them at six minutes, and it suits six to ten rather than younger, because the bargain is genuinely frightening. The Frog Prince is the gentler version of the same idea: a promise made to get something, and a father who insists it be kept. The Boy Who Cried Wolf covers the other half of the lesson, which is that being believed is a thing you can spend.

If the bargain upsets them

Stop and say plainly that the promise was a silly one and that nobody in your house has to keep a promise like that. Our guide to morals in children’s stories has more on saying the useful sentence without turning it into a sermon.

This is the group parents come looking for, usually after a row about tidying up. It is also the group with the shortest stories, which helps.

• Little Red Hen — five minutes, funny, ages 3–7, and the one everyone means.
• Hey Diddle Diddle, Little Red Hen — nine minutes, a warmer telling that ends in sharing.
• The Enormous Turnip — seven minutes, and the opposite argument: the job that only works with everybody on it.
• Goody Two Shoes — ten minutes, and the work is looking after other people.

Read the two hens in the same week and you have a proper conversation on your hands about whether the hen was right.

For a slightly older listener, The Devoted Friend at six minutes widens the idea from chores to friendship: the duty in it is turning up for somebody else, patiently, without being asked twice. The Blacksmith and His Dog is seven minutes on the same loyalty, told from the dog’s end of the lead.

Not every story here puts the child in the wrong, and the ones that do not are worth seeking out. They give a child the pleasure of noticing an adult mistake, which is the beginning of judgement.

The Emperor’s New Clothes takes three minutes and hands the only sensible line in it to a child. The Fisherman and His Wife is nine minutes of a grown-up who will not stop asking. Henny Penny is a whole farmyard of adults believing a rumour, and Goldilocks and The Three Bears is really about asking before you walk in.

The longer ones, for a weekend

A Little Princess at eleven minutes and Old Sultan at ten both put a duty on somebody who has every excuse to drop it. They need a listener of six or more and a night with no clock-watching in it, but they are the ones a child still remembers a month later.

The temptation after a story like this is to land it: so what do we learn. Resist that. The story has already done the work, and a child who has just enjoyed something does not want a test at the end of it.

A better closing line

Say which character you would not have wanted to be, and why, then stop talking. Nine times out of ten they will answer. If they do not, nothing is lost and the lights go off on a good note. It also works on a child who is too tired to talk, since you have not actually asked them anything.

Alongside this theme sit hard work, where the effort itself is the subject, and problem solving, where the trouble is a puzzle rather than a duty. Both are branches of bravery and courage.