Friday, February 19, 2010

Requests From Our Readers: Week 20

This week we are talking about tattling. Check out what our reader said....


"I was wondering about tattling. There are a lot of questions that come of this but specifically I was wondering - what do you do if you aren't in the room and a kid comes up to you and says 'so and so took my toy, hit me, etc'? Do you actually punish one of the kids based on what the other kid says? Are these punishments as severe as if you had witnessed the act yourself? Do you find that the tattle teller is generally truthful?"

So help her out...

Address her specific questions from the paragraph and tell us what do you usually do with tattling????

This is our last reader request in our docket... so send some more our way! Thank you so much for reading and commenting.

6 comments:

Megan said...

Okay, my son isn't old enough to really tattle, but the kids we play with are. So, I don't punish the offense as severely as if I witnessed it myself. Usually I tell the child who committed the offense to say sorry and give hugs, and let it go.

Rebecca said...

I agree with Megan. My nieces and nephews do this all the time and they tend to exaggerate things. So I say things like "Let's all be nice to each other and share, okay?" or something similar to that.

Tannie Datwyler said...

Now, it really does depend on the seriousness of the accusation.... but sometimes if you have a repeat tattler you need to nip it in the bud. A teacher I worked with always used to say to our students, "solve your own problem." I like that, and I've used it a lot!

Again, it totally depends on the situation... if it is a severe problem then of course you'll want to address it. But kids are kids, and tattlers will be tattlers!!

Delia said...

This is a really tough one for me concerning my two boys. I often tell my 5 year old to come get me to help him if his brother is bothering him or getting into something he shouldn't rather than handling it himself, i.e. hitting and pushing. He tries to tell Reid how he feels and to please stop but a 17 month old doesn't understand that and so he loses his temper and it gets physical. He hasn't become an incessant tattler yet but I don't know how to help him differentiate.

Trish and Matt said...

I just listened to a talk about sibling rivalry from the Love & Logic foundation. Here is their advice:

Don't waste time trying to find out who started it or the details about the crime. (Their reasoning: there are far too many bullies AND too many victims in society, and by doing so, we are just reinforcing those roles.)

Instead, encourage the kids to work things out themselves. Now obviously the ability to do this depends a lot on the age of the children. L&L suggests that whenever your kids have an argument, you say: "It sounds like you guys have a problem you need to work out." If they can't do it on their own, you add: "I'd like to help."

Then, if they can't come up with any ideas of their own, you can give them some ideas, like: "Some kids like to take turns." "Some kids find another toy to play with that won't cause them to fight." "Some kids take a break from each other until they can calm down," etc, etc. The idea is to give them little nuggets that they'll eventually be able to use on their own.

Putting these things into practice is always easier said than done, but we are slowly seeing a little success around here. For more info, I highly recommend checking out the Sibling Rivalry CD that can be found at loveandlogic.com. It caused me to really think about how we could help our kids get better at resolving their own problems.

Tannie Datwyler said...

I love that idea from Love and Logic! You are reminding me that I need to read that again. :)

That's exactly what I was talking about with 'solve your own problem' only I wasn't getting it to come across like you did. Teaching kids how to solve their differences really cuts down on the tattling. I like it!