Learning about the Inuit style of raising children has inspired me to change my approach to parenting. Getty Images
I’m not a yeller by nature, so the first time I really screamed at my daughter, it caught not only her attention, but also the attention of the two friends we were with.
She was maybe 2 years old and had yanked away from me to run out into the street. My reaction was primal, the yell that emanated from me almost guttural. Everything in me vibrated as I raised my voice and yanked my girl out of the street.
“Whoa,” one of my best friends said moments later. “I’ve never heard you do that. I didn’t even know you had it in you.”
It turned out, I did. But I thought it was only because I’d been sure my child was in immediate danger.
My daughter is adopted, a little Alaska Native child with Inuit blood coursing through her veins. It was perhaps because of that background that a recent NPR piece titled “How Inuit Parents Teach Kids to Control Their Anger” first jumped out at me.
As I read the piece, which detailed how Inuit parents almost never lose their tempers, I found myself feeling increasingly inadequate.
Because while that day in that street may have been the first time I yelled at my child, it certainly wasn’t the last.
In fact, with a little girl who is now 6 years old and full of constant sass, I’m repeatedly surprised by how often motherhood pushes me to that edge of boiling tempers and angry words.
Nevertheless, the NPR piece I read highlighted the story of Jean Briggs, an anthropologist who spent more than 30 years with Inuit tribes.
According to Briggs, the families she stayed with never acted angrily toward her, even though she was sure she’d made them angry a number of times.
They also never reacted with anger toward their children, choosing instead to maintain calm tones and avoiding even the slightest displays of frustration or irritation.
Those displays were considered weak and childlike, according to Briggs.
In this way, she explained, they taught their children to control their own tempers.
It appeared there was a lot I could learn from the Inuit way of parenting. I decided to do some digging and see what more I could find.