with 12- to 14-year-old Puerto Rican adolescents they used stories of heroic male and female Puerto
Ricans to offer cultural models, foster ethnic pride, model achievement-oriented behaviors, and pro-
vide coping strategies for common stresses of poverty, minority status, and racial prejudice. Being
sensitive to culture, cross-cultural stories and cultural values can have a big influence on both thera-
pist-child rapport and the impact of metaphors.
Context Matching
I mentioned earlier about the use of Australian fauna, such as a kookaburra (Story 6, “Come Up
Laughing”), a magpie (Story 29, “Changing Patterns of Behavior”), and echidnas (Story 37, “Find-
ing Tenderness”), in my stories. These are contextually relevant for the children with whom I
work. A commercial television station has for years had a cartoon clip of a young echidna rolling
down its burrow to bed before saying good night to the channel’s young viewers—something with
which many Australian kids are familiar. Magpies and kookaburras are found around the suburbs,
they are fed by many families, and are part of many young clients’ environment. This is not to sug-
gest you tell stories of kookaburras if you are working in Europe or North America, where your
children are not likely to associate with them. With some slight changes, there is no reason the
kookaburra could not be a laughing hyena, the magpie any trainable animal (such as a pet dog), or
the echidnas hedgehogs or porcupines. This is the beauty of stories: they can be adjusted to suit the
age, gender, characteristics, and context of your client, and thus enhance the potential therapeutic
gains.
POTENTIAL PITFALLS IN EFFECTIVE METAPHOR THERAPYAvoid Magic-Outcome Stories
By “magic-outcome stories” I refer to tales that have a problem and an outcome but do not provide
the means, processes, skills, or resources to help the child get from one to the other. A number of
classic stories, such as Cinderella, have feel-good outcomes but do not show the listener how to reach
the outcome.
Cinderella faces problems that may well match many of the problems experienced by our young
clients. She encounters sibling rivalry, abuse, a hostile stepmother, and a low level of self-worth. The
story provides an outcome fit to match the wildest fantasy of any female child: She is the most beau-
tiful woman at the ball, meets her prince charming, and is rescued from a situation of abuse and
poverty. This shift—from where she was to where she wants to be—comes about not because of any-
thing that Cinderella does, but rather through the magic of a fairy godmother. The transformation is
the product of the magical appearance, and magical powers, of a fanciful figure. Cinderella, herself,
does little to determine her own destiny. It is not something she has the power to replicate or main-
tain. The story provides no means for the character—or the listener—to lift herself out of her un-
desired situation and improve her lot in life.
Many Zen tales have a similar magical-outcome formula. One I have long liked and that I de-
veloped into a metaphoric tale in 101 Healing Stories (Burns, 2001, pp. 75–76) is the delightful re-
234 Creating Your Own Healing Stories for Kids