Do you want to know how to deal with a tattletail? Well, that's what we're talking about in this video.
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting, communication and family bonding and we are
going to be addressing how to get rid of the tattletailing for good.
Nobody likes a tattletail but if we're honest, sometimes those tattletails do help us a little
bit because they alert us to some things that we might not have noticed. Although most of the time
when a person is tattletaling, what that means is they're actually trying to point negative
attention toward another person. So, we know this is bad for them, it's bad for the other person and it
seems to create the wrong type of feeling in our environment. So, how do we handle tattletailing? Well
I've got some key tips for you in this video that are going to be very effective at teaching your
child when and when not to tell you something. It's really important that we establish there
is a difference between tattling and reporting. In fact, your children should know the difference
between tattling and reporting. So, when a person tattles, that's when they're trying to get positive
attention and put negative attention on another person. When a person is reporting, what they are
doing is they are concerned about another person and they're trying to get help for the other
person or for the situation. Their heart is more sincere. When a person comes and reports something
to me, I'm going to praise them. I'm going to tell them it's a good thing that they thought to come
and tell me and that I will go and handle the situation. But when a person comes and tattles to
me about another person, then I'm going to end up having a talk with them about their relationship
and about their behavior and helping them improve their communication style. The very first tip that
I would like to share with you today to help your child not tattle on their brothers and sisters
or maybe some of their friends is to help them create a vision of what type of a
relationship they want to have. So, in my teaching self-government parenting course, which is on
teachingselfgovernment.com, I talk about creating a vision for the family. It's a 20-year vision
where the family plans ahead for what type of family bonds and relationships they want to have.
Well, you also can create smaller visions for friend relationships, neighbor relationships
or any individual. You can say what's my 4-year vision for what U want this relationship to turn
out like with somebody else? Now, siblings, they've always lived together. They don't know not living
together so this is why sometimes they're kind of mean to each other. They start to take advantage of
each other, but what if they saw themselves in a new light. What if they saw themselves as people
who had a journey to go on together, as people who were going to be there for each other to support
and love and care for each other? Then, they would actually probably behave in different ways toward
each other. Help your children create a vision of what type of bond, connection, fun times, laughs that
they want to have with each other and that way, they will hopefully have a picture in place that
they can hold on to when they think I want to get that person in trouble. They think wait a minute, who
is that person to me? Maybe I shouldn't just want to get them in trouble, maybe I should sort out my
problem with them instead of making my problem even worse by tattling. It's important that you
pre-teach your children not only the difference between tattling and reporting, but what you are
going to do should they choose to tattle, that is important. They need to know that that is not the
type of communication that they are supposed to be having behind somebody else's back or when they're
trying to deflect from something that they've done wrong and that you will point it out to them every
time. They need to know the exact words that you will tell them if they choose to tattle, which
means that you needed to say I will say to you right now you are telling me this about that other
person that is actually you trying to get them in trouble, that's bad sibling relationships. You are
tattling. When you tattle on somebody else, that actually means that you're starting a
kind of a battle with that person and it can make conflict in your relationship. It's not a good idea.
What you should do instead is you should disagree appropriately with that person or maybe accept
the "no" answer if they've given you a "no" answer. Now, what are these words disagree appropriately, accept
the "no" answer? These are skills that you're going to teach your children. There are 4 basic skills
that a person needs to know if they are going to be really good at self-governing themselves. So,
I teach self-government all over the world. If you want to find out more about it, you can go
to teachingselfgovernment.com and you can find a podcast and all kinds of articles as well as
helps for teaching your children self-government and part of these helps are going to include the
steps to 4 basic skills. 2 of those basic skills are accepting "no" answers and criticism
and disagreeing appropriately. Those are 2 vital skills that children need
in order to handle their own problems so that they don't feel like they need to come
get somebody else in trouble so that they can get their way. So, I have 4 children of my own. I've
got a boy, then a girl, then a girl, then a boy. My oldest girl was kind of more of the bossy variety.
She definitely saw what was right and what was wrong and she wanted everybody to stick
to it. In fact, she started mothering everyone. We soon had a problem where she was tattletailing
all the time. At one point, she was the responsible child who was telling me when her toddler sibling
was getting into a problem that they shouldn't and was bringing my attention to something I
needed to address, but it soon shifted to her starting to point out every single thing that
everybody did and I think she was taking her role as big sister a little bit too much to heart. So, we
had a conversation with her. This conversation is something that I call a parent counseling session.
This is a time when I pull a child aside and I talk to them about one issue that they need to
work on. So, I pulled Paige aside and I said okay, Paige, I've noticed that you seem to be coming to
me a lot telling me things about other people and the way that you're doing it is actually
in a way that you're trying to get them in trouble, so this is called tattletailing. It's bad for your
relationship. This is what you need to do. So, then I said Paige, how about you help me come up with
some sort of a negative consequence for your tattletailing so that you will be inspired
or motivated not to tattle anymore. So, I did tell her in this conversation that I definitely still
wanted her to report things, things that were situations where someone maybe was going to get
hurt or it was a safety problem something might break something like that, you know, or maybe if
a person was going against some of our morals and standards that our family held as very important.
Those would be things that a caring sister would tell her parents but, if she was just trying to get
herself out of trouble or get somebody else into trouble, those were going to be no-no's. So, she came
up with a plan that she would earn a large job like a major maintenance if she ever
tattled on another person. This was very motivating to her because she did not like
to do major maintenances. They took more time than just regular jobs. We also said how about we check
up on this in our regular meetings. So, in the teaching self-government course, I talk about
the meetings that we have. We have regular mentor meetings with our children. Well, we were going to
use these mentor meetings as a checkup time where we could talk about how she was doing with her
tattling and then I took it even a step further. So, what I did was I said let's come up with a
little cue phrase so that if you're just about to tattle that I can say something and it will
give you that thought of wait, is this tattling or is this reporting, then I decided and she decided
with me that we would use the phrase, "Do you have something you need to report?" and then they would
think oh, is this a report, right, or is this a title because there was a difference. Well, I would like
to report to you that Paige did a fantastic job. It only took a matter of a few days before she
realized she could catch herself from tattling and choose not to do it anymore. I did have to correct
her a few times and in years to come occasionally she got corrected and got the opportunity to earn
her major maintenance that she decided upon but it soon became a non-issue for her. Did you see
some of the key things that I did with Paige in that story? So, we had a special meeting just about
one issue, we talked about it, I explained when to talk about something, when not to. We also talked
about what would motivate her to stop the behavior so, we created a negative consequence. You can also
create positive consequences to motivate a person to do the correct behavior. We also practiced a
little bit of what that might look like, I promised her I would be consistent about correcting her
and we plan for future follow-up. This is all the process of self-government. In fact, there's
so much more to self-government that I would love to share with you. If you have enjoyed this video, I
know you'll love my next video which is a full class, super transformational. It is called "The
Expectation Trap versus The Cycle For Success." Go to that class now in order to get more help
for your family and having more smooth, calm and connected days at your house. We'll see you there.