Parenting with Puppets

I've always had a thing for puppets. Ever since Sesame Street. In fifth grade we got to choose a famous person to write a biography about, and I chose Jim Henson (creator of the muppets). I'm not exactly sure what it is about puppets that I find so intriguing, but I think it's something about the way they come alive and seem so real and separate from their puppeteers. Puppets run rampant through all sorts of television programming for young children because little kids find them pretty intriguing as well (oh the things I have in common with young children, they are many . . . you don't want to see me hungry).

As much as I've always had a fondness for puppets, I didn't discover them as a parenting tool until Luke and Jaz were three years old. That's when Pouch came on the scene. We were living in the hilltowns at that point, about 30 minutes (by car) from our current downtown, and we spent a good portion of each day driving. Lena had given me Pouch--originally designed to be a coin pouch--to help me deal with the nightmare situation of coins in my car (I usually put them in the door handle and the cup holders). But Pouch sat neglected, beside me in the storage compartment of the driver's side door for many months. I really wish that I could provide some visual reference for how Pouch worked exactly, but our current Pouch (Pouch the fourth, I believe) went missing in our most recent move and our usual supplier (an artisan gallery in town) is all out of Pouches at the moment. Basically, Pouch is shaped like a clam shell, and opens by squeezing at the corners of the opening (or mouth). Squeezing and releasing causes the "mouth" to open and shut. I discovered this one drive, and then, in a moment of desperation when Luke and Jaz were on the verge of falling asleep (at this point, them falling asleep--even for a few minutes--in the car in the afternoon meant that bedtime would be delayed for several hours), I held Pouch up where the kids could see him, and Pouch started talking. Luke and Jaz stayed awake for the rest of the drive, and that was the beginning of an amazing friendship (and I got really good at driving with one hand and "pouching" with the other).

One day when I was in a waiting room with the kids, I suddenly wished I had thought to bring Pouch with me (Pouch, as a rule, generally lived in the car until Zeben came along and frequently insisted on bringing him into the house, which is why he's now lost). And then I wondered if maybe just my plain old hand could do the same thing. And thus, Hand was born. Hand works just as a hand would inside of a puppet, and the odd thing is that the kids still manage to see Hand as so much more than a hand despite the lack of costume. The voice is enough. Hand's twin, Handy (you may notice that my children are completely lacking in creativity when it comes to the naming of inanimate--or, I suppose, occasionally animate--objects) has also been known to show up and start talking to the kids when they're not listening to me, Mom (a la "talk to the hand, cuz the rest ain't listening," except I guess it's more like, "talk to the hand cuz you're not listening to the rest"). Why are my children so much more likely to listen to Hand or Handy or Pouch than their regular mother? I think the shift just catches their attention in a different way. And sometimes, it's almost like they forget I'm even there.

We do have some real puppets as well. I'm a huge fan of the Folkmanis line, and over the years we have collected a few special creatures (all with hugely original names, of course). Zeb is currently sleeping nightly with his pal, "Snailey." A snail puppet? Brilliant. Snailey is an incredibly easy way to get Zeben out of a belligerent state. The video below shows a small conversation between Zeb and Snailey, after Zeb had been moping and moaning and melting for about 1/2 an hour (it is hard for him in the afternoons when he's home, waiting for Luke and Jaz to be done with school, and often refusing to nap). You can see how quickly Zeben's mood shifts once Snailey comes to life.



I don't think that Puppets as a playful parenting tool will be as long-lasting as, say, story telling. Zeben's three-year-old eyes light up when I pull out a Puppet, but already Luke and Jaz are a little more likely to just roll their eyes when a puppet first appears (though I can usually still win them over within a couple of minutes). But for toddlers and preschoolers, puppets are simply fabulous. A little kid will often take an instruction from a Puppet when he or she won't even consider listening to the same words otherwise. And when you're on the phone, and can't talk, a puppet can still play with your kid, with very little adult mental involvement required.

Lena didn't know that I was trying to document "the puppets in our life" when I took these pictures of her talking on the phone the other day. She did not speak to Zeben at all, but still managed to fully engage him--with the help of Turtle--while she finished her conversation.


I'm working on a way to store and display our puppet collection in our new house, but I wonder if I will miss having them just strewn about everywhere, easy to pick up and use when the need arises. Perhaps I should make a bit of puppet storage for every room, fire extinguishers of a different sort. Not that I have to worry about misplacing my hands, of course. Useful little guys that they are.

Zeben and Sealie, my favorite folkmanis puppet