Tattling on siblings

[ParallelJJCat]

Originally Posted by Hopes

I think your brothers helped you learn the difference, it just took you a decade or two (depending on how old you are). The fact you kept caving was your own personality. You knew the consequences but you did it anyway. Your brothers must not have been too rough on you or you would have stopped ratting on them.

Keep in mind I'm ten years younger than my next oldest sibling. Some of these things took place when I was literally too young to know better- plus I was getting mixed messages. Do you really expect a six or seven year old NOT to wonder why her Xmas present disappeared? As I got older and realized my parents were basically using me as a tool, I did stop...in fact when my brother used to sneak out at night, our dad would lock him out. My window was the one he knocked on so I would wake up and let him back.

But I'm not really talking about my experiences or asking what the definition is. I think most people understand what tattling is...I would never, for example, rat on a coworker for slacking off if it had no direct impact on me (and even if it did, I would approach them first). I'm asking how you explain it to kids.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by ParallelJJCat

I'm asking how you explain it to kids.

I think kids easily learn via parents simply telling them they shouldn't tattle whenever they are tattling. That's what teachers do.

[GrandviewGloria]

Reminds me of a frequently-repeated story from our old town. There were two couples, best friends since childhood, who before they climbed the religion ladder in search of rich 'contacts', were Baptists. One couple had a son, the other a daughter. The son was playing over at the daughter's house, when they were maybe eight. The son ran to tell the daughter's parents that she had said some rather innocuous 'ugly word'. They drug her into their wardrobe room and were beating her with a hairbrush. While the mom was still beating her, with her screams echoing around the house (which you've probably seen in decorating magazines...I used to drool over the photos), the dad went out into the drawing room and found the boy hiding behind a sofa (Scalamandre Silk covered Chinese Chippendale, with Cinnabar Lacquer legs and stretchers...and in the background, a Persimmon lacquered dining room with Apricot Portieres and Peridot Rideaux Ballon...I'll never forget the photos. The house hit the maggies while we were still living in a unit in one of our apartment buildings. We bought our first real house in that neighborhood a year or so later.). The kid had his hands over his mouth, absolutely rolling on the floor in a fit of laughter...face red...tears of 'funny' running down his cheeks.

"You made that up, didn't you?"

The kid nodded yes.

The girl's parents insisted the boy's parents punish him bigtime. They didn't.

The girl married big money and lives in Europe (I knew you'd want to hear about her happy ending). The tattletale boy has never completed a semester of college; despite having been sent to the best preschool/private day school/boarding schools, has been arrested and convicted more than once for minor stuff, and has never had a job. And of course, he still lives at home. He's got to be a bit over thirty by now...

Those kids were a couple of years older than our oldest. I first heard the story, years after the incident, when the boy's family were moving into our gated enclave. Nobody wanted them there, because of the boy. We warned our kids about him. They'd already heard about him, and steered clear. Other kids in the neighborhood were not so lucky. He stole a bottle of some kind of expensive booze, hid it in a restroom at the Yacht Club next door, and blamed it on a neighborhood kid. One thing like that after another. So you see, real malicious tattle-telling can escalate to something far worse.

And his mom would say stuff like, "You know, all the kids in our neighborhood are PSYCHOS! The things our Pookey tells us about what they do are just awful!" Last I heard (we moved across the continent, and they moved to another state, too, for some mysterious reason), the kid had poisoned all their friendships, their relationships with their families....and even their professional lives. A bad tattletale evolves into someone who sets other people up. People don't like that.

Anyway, I regard that boy as having been The Definitive Tattletale. And so I have to say that none of my kids were tattletales (maybe because we held him out as an example...but maybe just because our kids had better things to do...or maybe just relative to 'Pookey').