Children Should be Tattle Tales When It Comes to Safety
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As parents of young children, we often get frustrated having to be the referee when siblings are fighting or when our kids have a disagreement with another friend. How many times have we been told to, “Let them work it out,” or even have told our kids not to become ”tattle-tales.”
Kids often see issues in black and white and can follow our directions quite literally, which in some instances, is not good. Today as I was walking my two girls home from the busstop, a neighbor who happens to be in my oldest daughter’s class started a conversation with her about how bad today was and how she was glad it was over.
Curious, I asked what happened and only then did I get details of a fist fight on the school bus from YESTERDAY afternoon!! Luckily, both girls shared the details of the story (which involved two other classmates), neither one had been hurt, and both seemed to understand the importance and severity of these kids’ actions. But I am still wondering why my own daughter, who usually talks quite openly about big goings-on at school, stayed quiet.
Come to find out, the assistant principal interviewed my daughter and this neighbor since they were witnesses to the fight and the girls were told not to talk about the fight with anyone or risk punishment themselves. Now, rather than just not talking to her other classmates about what happened, my daughter took this literally to mean that she couldn’t share this news at home.
We have had a conversation about this already but it is a point that I will reinforce frequently. As our kids grow older they will face bigger and more dangerous challenges and it’s vitally important that we have an open communication with them and maybe redefine what a “tattle-tale” or a “snitch” is.
Granted, I don’t need to hear that, “Johnnie dropped my pencil on the floor,” but if she’s in the proximity of a fight or some other event, I want to know about it! If she hears something about possible violence against students or school buildings, I want to know about it so the authorities can be called.
We’re all trying our best to raise independent kids who can think for themselves but in fifth grade there are still some things they cannot and SHOULD not handle themselves.
photo credit: Michael (mx5tx)
Good post Christina. We always would have our girls determine “In trouble or Out of trouble”? If what they were “tattling” would get someone into trouble then it probably wasn’t something mom needed to hear. If it was something that was going to help someone get OUT of trouble, harm, etc., then they definitely should tell us.
It took us some time to talk through some situations so they could see the differences but it served us well during those “tattletale” years.
The other thing is that we’ve always told our kids that they should tell us EVERYTHING - especially if another adult tells them not to!
Thanks for sharing this. My son is 13 and he hates telling about anything, instead he usually steps in and trys to fix it himself.
I am going to start reinforcing that he needs to tell I guess I never thought about it this way before.
“In trouble or Out of trouble” is a very catchy way of expressing the difference between tattling and helping in a dangerous situation. I think it will work wonderfully with the younger children.
When my son was 13 he also had a need to step in and fix it himself. I think that it is part of a teenager’s need to become independent. He is now 16 and has opened up again.
The most important thing in all these stages is that we keep the lines of communication open.