Are We Sending the Wrong Message about Tattling?

It’s the start of school, and with it, comes tattling. If you work with preschool or elementary-age children, you know what I’m talking about. You might already be mentally preparing yourself for the influx of stories letting you know of another’s behavior. With so much already on our plate, the last thing we often need is to be interrupted by little Susie telling what Austin did on the playground.

In my own home, I’ve just started experiencing this phenomenon. My daughter runs to tell me if the baby is getting into something she shouldn’t, if her brother took one of her toys, and has no problem spilling all the juicy details if a fellow friend got in trouble. It’s exhausting, yes. But our words hold power, and as an educator and mom of a preschooler myself, I wonder if we’re doing more harm by discouraging this behavior than we even know.

We battle it by saying things like

• “Don’t tattle”
• “Just worry about yourself”
• “Don’t squeal unless it’s a big deal”
• “Don’t be a rat, or snitch”

We often believe that tattling is a way to get another child in trouble or a way to direct attention away from one child’s misbehavior to another’s, sometimes even assuming that tattling is an outright lie.  But research has shown that nine out of 10 times, a tattler is telling the truth. Merryman, co-author with Po Bronson of Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children, says, “We’re much more likely to chastise a true tattle than we are a kid’s actual bold-faced lie to us.”

• I believe the first step is to teach and model kindness. In our house, I want to teach my children to see other’s needs. I don’t want my daughter to just “worry about herself.” I want to cultivate a heart in her that sincerely cares about the people around here, including the boy she just saw get pushed down on the playground.  I do this by stopping my car and handing the man holding a sign a fast-food gift card and talking to him until the light turns green again. I do this by speaking kindly to and about people and by praying for people with my children.
• The second step is asking if she took action herself first. If a friend takes a toy out of her hands without asking, she needs to first go to him and say “I was playing with that toy. Can I have it back?” If he refuses, this is where the adult gets involved. When my husband and I were discussing this, he said, it’s exactly what we, as adults do.  If we have friends over for a cookout and one of them starts back to his house with our lawnmower, we would first go up to him and say “Hey, that’s our lawnmower. It needs to stay here.” If he continues with our lawnmower, that’s when we would probably consult a higher authority, such as the police. Teaching children to take action themselves as a first step teaches valuable self-advocacy skills that they will forever need to utilize.
• Third, as children grow and their reasoning skills improve, they need to be able to sort out their motives, the “why” behind the action. My 4 year-old is just starting to grasp this concept. When she comes telling me something her brother did, I can ask “Aislyn, are you actually concerned for your brother or are you just trying to get him into trouble?” This question gets at the heart of the matter, because we want our kids and students to be genuinely concerned for others.