Tattling

As a child, my brothers and I were not allowed to tattle. This played out in several ways. Once, my older brother had an accident on a playgroud. He hit his forhead and crashed to the ground. He was holding his head and blood was pooling around him. I was unrelated to the accident, but I crouched next to him and asked, “Should I tell Mom?”  YES!!  64 stitches later!  Yikes.

Another example was between my younger brother and I. He had been a bit feisty and I had repeatedly asked him to stop doing that specific thing. He would not stop. I looked at him and calmly said, “Do that again and you will get a swirly.”  About five minutes later, my younger brother found his head in a toilet and me flushing it! (I may have been punched, but…) (I probably need to apologize to all my lovely readers, for ruining your vision of me… but, I was 13 once! And it may not have always been my best display of personality.) I did not hurt him (except his pride), but he now understood me clearly. Guess what, Mom never found out (or did she already know it was happening?!), because we did not tattle!  And, my brother stopped aggravating me. Better yet, we are great friends and have been our entire lives!!  

I am not encouraging allowing total chaos between siblings, but I am encouraging you to allow children to work through their issues. I did not recognize this privilege that Mom gave us, until I had children of my own. Children naturally want to tattle!  If an adult responds to their woes positively, the tattling to that adult will continue and become more exaggerated.

Tattling is a compounding issue. The more that tattling occurs, the more it is practiced!  Worse yet, tattling creates a reliance on parents to solve any issues that children have. When tattling is permitted, then children turn to their parents to fix every situation, which usually, the parents are not even present to witness!  

Also, tattling is irritating (not to mention exhausting)!  When a child turns to an adult to say, “my sister just hit me,” our immediate response is to get upset with the child that did the hitting… but, the tattler never runs into the room saying, “i just took the doll that my sister was playing with and threw it in the toilet. And then she hit me!”  If that was how tattling played out, we would have a truer picture of what was actually taking place.

I was amazed as a young parent, how frustrating and annoying it was to hear my child tattle, but it was also exhausting to deal with in a true-detective-style-fact-finding way. So… we eliminated tattling. 

We told our children that if they have a problem with a sibling or another child, it was their responsibility to work through the situation and find a solution which does not involve hurting each other. (If punches were thrown, that is when I would step into the room to be a presence (and a ref), usually not needing to say a single word.) When they did tattle, I would ask, “Are you tattling?  Are you sure you do not want to figure this out yourself?” That gentle reminder usually turned them back to find a solution… Why?! If one of our children tattles, they receive the same punishment that their sibling would get. Once that happened a few times, they understood the consequence of tattling. 

This may not be the perfect solution, but it did teach my children to work through their issues. When they were little, they may have thrown a few punches at each other while learning to navigate the art of working through differences, but as they got older it translated into conversations. It has had the bonus effect of removing gossip about each other and when questions come up about behavior, my kids will go directly to their sibling to have a conversation to express their concerns or hash out differences. 

My children are all extremely close to each other, which is such a joy to see! I would give a small bit of credit to the fact that they know how to work through issues together, they don’t allow those issues to fester, and they do not draw a third party into the trenches of their mess but they dig out of it together!

And in the meantime, you my friend, will enjoy parenting a whole lot more!