Tattling vs. Telling

One of the things we struggle most with our kids on is the concept of “Tattling vs.  Telling”.  At home I hear a constant:

“MOMMY, Bella won’t stop looking at me”

or

“MOMMY, Zack won’t stop talking”

 Obviously neither of those situations are emergencies.  Nor do they really have to tell me that.  At their ages (Five and Eight), they should be able to handle those situations on their own.  But they can’t and thus, I am left ready to pull my hair out because of the two of them.  Finally I sat my kids down to explain the difference between tattling and telling.

Tattling:  Your main purpose is to get that person in trouble.

Telling:  Ask yourself, are they hurting you?  Hurting themselves?  Doing something dangerous? Yes to any of those…then go tell.

Unfortunately, the need to get each other in trouble was greater and the tattling continued.  So then I took a different approach.  I either ignored tattling completely or I said “thank you for telling me” and did nothing.  When they got angry because they thought the other one was getting away with something, they let me know it.  That is when I came up with a plan!  You know how when we were younger our parents always told us that if we’re the one heard, it doesn’t matter if we did it or not, we were going to get in trouble?  That is the strategy I took.  So the next time a child came up to me to tattle, the tattler had to go sit in the corner.

When I was student teaching, my first graders were HORRIBLE with the whole tattling vs. telling thing.  It was constant all day long tattling.  I incorporated the Tattle Box.  I told the children that from now on I did not want to hear their tattles.  If they just have to tattle on each other, then they need to take it to the Tattle Box.  The Tattle Box was made out of a coffee can with a slit in the lid.  There were slips of paper next to the can that the children could write their tattles on and “tell” it to the can.  For the first couple weeks the Tattle Box was overflowing with tattles.  But once they realized they were not getting anything by tattling, the tattling in our classroom stopped.

I’ve thought about doing a tattle jar at home….it may cut down on the tattling, the number of times Bella sits in the corner, and it allows the kids to practice their writing skills!