Tattle Tale
Sunday, September 30th, 2012From Friday Mom – Jaime
It seems like no matter how old we get, we run across things that we don’t like. It could be a process at work that needs to be revamped. You may have stumbled across someone doing something they shouldn’t. And no matter how old I get, I still find myself thinking “Is this something that I really should be going to someone else about?”
By age 34, I’ve developed a decent filter for when I think it’s appropriate to vent my frustrations to other people. At age 4, however, Andrew hasn’t quite developed this skill.
Whenever incident reports came home from some playground injury at daycare, he’s always been happy to report EXACTLY what happened and who did what to who… He came home from daycare the other day all upset because he wasn’t allowed to play in the coloring center. When we asked why, he said he got in trouble because he told the teacher (repeatedly) that a little girl was using “bad words.” (No, the words weren’t really that bad. I think “poopyhead” was the extent of it, but still, it upset Andrew that another little kid was being picked on…)
Supposedly – and I base this only on the highly scientific method of the monthly emails I get from various sources that tell me what my kid should be up to developmentally at this age – tattling is a big thing right now for preschoolers. So how do you stop them from running around and telling on everyone? These same emails encourage telling the kids to work their problems out themselves, unless there’s an emergency.
I give my son a lot of credit for being able to do a lot of things. But when it’s easier to push and shove over differences, how do you really get them to develop the “talk it out” type of skill? These same highly informative emails don’t really offer that kind of advice, just that this is what we, as parents, are supposed to do.
I don’t really find that kind of parenting advice all that helpful. I haven’t figured out any brilliant solutions to this one, but if any of you have, I’d love to hear about it.