My boy and his best buddy. They’ve just learned how to ‘tell on’ each other and have been practicing—a lot!
My kids are always tattling on one another. Even the youngest one has started giving me a play by play of their disagreements. Should I intervene? Or should I be letting them figure it out on their own?
The parallel play phase seems to end right around the time that verbal skills are really taking off. And as they start interacting with other kids, whether they’re playing with siblings or with friends, at some point, inevitably somebody is going to get upset. Then they have two choices, get into an argument with their playmate, or report it to the authorities. And you, mama, are the sergeant on duty.
1) “What are you going to do about it?” I’ll never forget my 6th grade teacher. This was her tagline. Whatever issue you brought to her—problems with a classmate, a forgotten dayplanner or lost assignment, she’d look at you with a deadpan expression and say “What are you going to do about it?” At the time it seemed harsh, but the theory was a good one. Kids have more problem-solving skills than they realize, and sometimes they just need a grown-up to make them stop and work through the issue on their own. Try putting the ball in their court with questions like “What do you think you should say to your friend?” and “How can you guys fix this so that you can keep playing together?”
2) Let them sort it out—the supervised way. If you say “I don’t want to hear it! Go figure it out yourselves!” she may get discouraged and feel un-heard when she comes to you with a problem. Instead of stone-walling (which can be tempting after the millionth “He’s in my room!” “She touched my arm!”) let her know that you will keep an ear out in case the problem gets too big, but that you trust her to figure out the smaller issues without a grown-up having to come in and interrupt the fun.
Nanny Carrie Wants to Know: How do you manage ‘tattling’ in your house? Is it mostly among siblings or with friends? Do you handle them differently?
RSS
I was at a teaching conference yesterday and a director had a great idea. She said to enlarge some kind of animal and put it on the wall. Her example was a turtle. If the kids wanted to tattle they had to go tell Tommy the Turtle because she was not going to listen to tattling.
My 3 & 5 year old girls are constantly doing this very thing! To date I usually hold a mini court session whereby I let each of them pled their case (in turn of course!) When all the evidence has been submitted, I let them be the jury – usually starting with “now tell me what you could have done differently”, or “what do you think we should do now”. Usually with minimal assistance on my part, they are able to resolve the issue! What has made me feel even better is when I overhear them starting to argue, and instead of the immediate “I’m telling Mommy”, sometimes I actually hear them going thru this mini court process themselves! I think it just helps them to see the others perspective and allows them to mediate thru a problem.
My kids aren’t yet at the tattling stage….but they are close! Jack’s not old enough to tell on Emma for anything, and Emma’s tattling is often quite helpful. “Mommy, Jack is climbing on the dining room table”…. It’s actually nice to have another set of eyes while I’m doing dishes.
In my classroom, I would often ask the children how they tried to solve the problem themselves before coming to me. Always stressing that if someone is hurt (or feelings are hurt), that I should be told right away, but they should try to solve minor problems by themselves first.
In many cases, I tell my kids if they are telling a grown up something to get someone in trouble, it’s tattling. If they are telling an adult something to get a kid OUT of trouble, well good on ya!