I am a parent of a 4 year old and a 1 year old and recently the 4 has become my informant. Sure most of it is just minor infractions or updates on what #2 is getting into at the moment, but in all its harmless. I want her to go to people of authority if something is wrong so I am confused now by the sage parental refrain, " nobody likes a tattletale". It seems like the message is “little kids are supposed to unite against big people”, which of course they’ll figure out on their own.
“Nobody likes a tattle tale” has multiple meanings. Mostly it’s, “Figure out how to deal with this shit on your own.” or “Figure out how to deal with this shit on your own, like we taught you, because your brother is just trying to get under your skin to annoy you.”
My wife and I raised our kids before the age of the helicopter parent, and while we were there for them when they needed us, sometimes kids think they need us when they don’t. That’s where this phrase comes in.
And sometimes the tattletale is informing for the pleasure of getting someone else in trouble.
My mother is a germ-phobe and neatness fanatic. If I spilled something in the kitchen accidentally getting myself a snack, and diligently cleaned it up, my brother would still go to her and tell her I’d done it, and depending on what kind of mood my mother was in, I might still get punished for carelessness (which wasn’t true-- no matter how careful you are, occasionally, you still spill stuff), even if you couldn’t detect any bit of the spill. My brother knew my mother was like that, and would make the story as dramatic as possible, sometimes even embellishing.
Some tattletales are clearly enjoying what adults might call Schadenfreude, and that is a really unattractive quality. It’s also not the same thing as narcing on your brother for doing something really dangerous, like riding his bike in traffic without a helmet.
Also, some tattletales are currying favor with adults, and go around looking for things to tattle on; in adults, say, in the workplace, we’d call that brown-nosing, and it’s also considered an unattractive quality.
It sounds like your 4-year-old may just be doing her best to help you with the mommying duties, which is natural behavior for a 4-year-old. Is this all she is doing, or is she doing stuff like this at her preschool, or at friends’ houses as well? If she’s tattling on potential friends at preschool to curry favor with the teacher, or because she seems to like watching them get punished, then maybe you need to have a talk with her. Watching her little sib is fine, and mommy needs to know if he’s doing something dangerous, but classmates who are her age don’t need her to watch them.
Yes to all of the above. It’s not about being a snitch. It’s about being an asshole to your sibling. One child running to a parent to get the other in trouble is not going to make for a peaceful house. One of the kids coming to you to tell that the other is lighting the garage on fire is a whole other issue.
Oh my! The sayings about “tattletales” are really unfortunate and many are actually kind of stupid. Children need to know when telling on others is right and when it is wrong.
I find myself stumped when thinking about how I would tell a child about the difference. But it is very important to teach them and I’m surprised we don’t seem to have any good way to teach children the difference between right and wrong in this respect. It certainly is something that we, as a society, really do need.
Does anyone reading this know of a site or have any advice to tell children when it is right to tell on others and when it is wrong?
What would you tell a 10 year old about the “CrimeStoppers” program? What would you tell them about when it’s right to inform about someone on CrimeStoppers and when it is wrong? How would you explain the difference?
I have no children so please excuse my ignorance. But what can a 1 year old child do that is worthy of snitching? Somehow, I can’t imagine what a parent would do to correct a 1 year old?
Oh Boy! I found a site for Elmer the Safety Elephant. I remember 60 years ago children in my elementary school used to be given pamphlets and brochures featuring Elmer the Safety Elephant. I remember that we were taught the top ten rules of safety when walking on the street. One of our more portly teachers even wore an elephant costume and pretended to be Elmer. Unfortunately, he had a pronounced lisp and so we all knew it was fake. He was Santa around Christmas and Elmer in the fall.
Anyway, here is one site featuring Elmer the Safety Elephant and listing several important traffic safety tips. If I had any children, I’d make sure they all knew and understood the following tips:
As soon as babies get their feet under them they seem intent on committing suicide. A four year old will see you taking everything dangerous away from the baby to keep them safe and he will join in to try and be helpful. So anything he perceives as being something mommy told the baby not to do he will come running to tell her about it.
It’s a much different situation than a 9 year old telling on a 7 year old to get them in trouble. Especially because as a parent you know the 9 year old did something first to force the reaction. “Bobby hit me!” is translated to I tortured Bobby for 15 minutes then he hit me.
I suspect (in my totally non-parent way) that the worst thing to do is to teach children that one way or the other is always right. That’s the problem with trite sayings; they don’t take into consideration circumstances.
Better to teach the child to think about what they’re doing, primarily to consider what is best for the tattlee and the general good. Help them understand that we know they are going to make the wrong choice sometimes, but they can learn from it when they make a mistake.
They should be given some ground rules, stuff like “if someone could get seriously hurt, alway tell a grown up” or “if what someone is doing isn’t as bad as what you do, maybe you should keep it to yourself”. You could even talk about big tattletales in the news, like Wikileaks or Edward Snowden.
If the teller’s goal is to keep someone from getting hurt, it’s ok. If it’s to get someone in trouble, it’s not. I tell my students "if you’re trying to get somebody in trouble, I’m not interested. Alternatively, if it doesn’t involve blood, fire, or vomit I don’t need to know.
When I was in school, our teachers generally stressed that you only told when something was important. “So and so isn’t paying attention!” isn’t something to worry about. “So and so stuck a paper-clip in the electrical outlet and shorted it out” is.* Vandalism, bullying, anything like that is a big deal. Stuff like “didn’t do his homework, doodling, playing with toys under his desk” is something for the teacher to worry about.
*Yes, someone actually did that when I was in eighth grade.
For now, I think you want to encourage communication of any type. You don’t want to praise it to the point that she’s constantly looking for things to tell you about though. And be sure to encourage other topics of conversation. But I’m not sure you want to trying to differentiate at this age when to tell and when not to.
Eventually you will want to teach her how to decide. It comes down to safety
“Is somebody hurt?”
“Is somebody going to be hurt?”
“Is this part of a bad pattern of constant negativity?”
“Is there incipient property damage?”
After about age 5, depending on her maturity level, start asking these questions when she brings you a report. Then talk to her about something else interesting to her, so she gets that you do want to talk with her, and it doesn’t need to be about an emergency.
My parents and grandparents were teachers so they had a lot of experience dealing with child tattletales. The other teachers did too.
The general rule that they always announced prominently the first day of class was that if someone snitched on something that didn’t involve bodily harm, an eminent threat or a felony then both the person that committed the act and the person that snitched would get the exact same punishment. Unsurprisingly, the need to apply that rule almost never came up after that.
Kids aren’t as dumb or naive as many adults assume. They will claim that they don’t understand using arguments and hypotheticals that would make any lawyer proud but they get it if you just tell them what is unacceptable in general language.
We have a four-year-old and a one-year-old, too, so we’re dealing with this as well - mainly with the four-year-old and her friends, not the one-year-old, but I’m sure that’ll come.
I think the big question, when you’re faced with ‘Joe is doing X!!’, is what’s the implied rest of that sentence?
‘Joe is doing X, which could kill him/blow up the house/dye the dog green’ - you want to encourage this one. Anything that involves damage to a person or thing, you want to hear about. For us, this falls under, ‘Whoa, thank you for telling me! Let’s go sort that out right away.’
‘Joe is doing X, which is driving me nuts’ - this one is good too, it’s good to have communication about problems, but you don’t necessarily need to do anything about it. We get this one a fair bit, and our usual response is ‘So how do you think you guys could fix that?’ or (when Joe is a playmate rather than the baby) ‘So tell him how you feel about it and find a solution between you.’ Sometimes we still have to intervene after the four-year-old tries to fix it, what with the one-year-old being one and not so hot on negotiation, but at least we’re establishing the idea that she should try to sort stuff out herself.
‘Joe is doing X and I want him to get in trouble for it’ - this is the one you want to discourage. We don’t get this a lot, so far, but we’ve mostly gone with ‘Not your problem. What are you doing meanwhile?’
What you need to get across is the difference between tattling and reporting. Tattling is simply trying to get someone else in trouble. Reporting is when they tell about something which will help them or someone else, such as reporting incidences of bullying, etc.
The unfortunate side effect of saying that “Nobody like a tattletale” is that people feel extreme reticence when reporting that they know they should. This is why whistleblowers get the dirty end of the stick.
