When I talk about these tattletales and things you can do, please look at the whole situation and decide for yourself when this is appropriate to apply. When they come to you, do not immediately go rescue them.
For example, I've asked them to stop and then they come back to me, they'll then will you talk about what kind of a voice did you use? Did you use the annual booster stop, And kids could possibly go into the soft voice like fearful avoidance, kindness thing.We'll look at what type of voice did you use.
Depending on the age of the child with the younger ones, I do give him in the Super incremental, but if it's an older child then I might give them more than one part. So we might talk about the voice and the body language at the same time. If it's a younger child, it's just like you, ask them to stop or tell them we don't ask like, “will you stop?” Then did you use that tone of voice and then also did you put your body behind it?
We talk about not being angry or mean, but to be serious and assertive. And so we'll go through those and as they come back to me again, the younger ones, I'll give them one step at a time. And just step them up incrementally. And for the older kids, depending on the age and you know how I feel, the child is, I will give them more than one step at a time. And when I'm working with the younger children, maybe today I will just give up and then I will go in and help them to solve the problem or then the next day I might give him the words and the body language, and then I might go in and help if they weren't able to solve it.
Once I give them all three, then we'll go into some other things you get to decide, like, is that a person you want to hang out with and they might continue to do that and you'll choose to be with them or are you going to choose to be somewhere else? I don't want anyone to be bullied. I always keep an eye on them.
Once they tattle, you know, keeping an eye on it. But I'm not going in immediately and rescuing them. I'm giving them steps that they can use to. 'til they learn to manage that situation and to feel empowered on their own. Because guess what? Even as adults, we have adults that are grumpy or don't treat us well, or try to get away with things. And are we supposed to go to our spouse or go to our parents? As adults, we can say that this is happening at work or this is happening at the grocery line. We want to empower our children and to do it in an assertive but a kind way. Again ultimately comes down to those decisions, do I want to be with this person? Or do I want to be somewhere else? And then just in these last couple minutes, I'll talk about the second most common type of tattletale and that's often those kids that get in a lot of trouble themselves, but they take on that kind of adult role.
There are different things that we do for those types of tattletales. So when you get those type of tattletales again those are often the kids that break a lot of the rules themselves. So you want to know and see what's going on and how often do they break the rules too? And things like this can come from programs around. My role as a teacher would be different than my role as a parent because if it's my role as a parent, am I doing something that's making them fearful or judgmental of their siblings? Do I really lose my temper? Do I make them feel shamed for breaking rules? Then that is what I would need to change in the family.
They have to be responsible for themselves. Where's your focus? Where's your target? Is your target on the teacher? Is your target on the material, the book or the White Board? Where are we learning? Or is your target on the other jets? So if you're going to learn, where will your target be? So you're responsible for yourself, and if the teacher needs to say something, then that's the teacher's job. She will figure that out, or he will figure that out. Remember children are great by their very nature and we have that responsibility and privilege of to raise them.
