Why Can’t They Just Get Along? 3 Steps to Curb Tattling

 

The nails on the proverbial chalk board of motherhood may very well be the incessant ring of tattling.  “Mooooom, he’s….”, “Mooooom, she won’t…..”, hear that record played a few too many times and any well-meaning mama is sure to go a bit crazy.

In the frenzy of the everyday I start well, training hearts and addressing issues, giving my time away freely and trying to meet kids at eye level, but sometimes by the end of the day (Who am I kidding? Some days it’s lunch time.  Ahem, lunch at 10:00 am, even.) I don’t care who started what or who is not sharing with whom, I just want to stop the madness.  While my feeble attempts may buy me a few moments of peace, they do nothing to cure the root issue.

Parenting is not for wimps.

What I find truly concerning about the whole tattletale process, even more frustrating than a long day of “Mooooom, fill-in-the-blank-with-whatever-you-want” is what is often revealed in my children’s hearts when they choose to tell on one another.  Instead of being this team of Westenbergs working out life together, learning and growing together, we cross over into the land of man eating piranhas, seeking to devour our own.

Tattling becomes the ultimate trump card as disagreements escalate.  It becomes a power play for kids, as they hold the threat of telling over one another’s head to force submission.  Or even worse, they utilize it in middle school bully fashion, simply to get one another in trouble, as though minimizing someone else and pointing out their faults somehow elevates their own righteous status or position.  Have you seen that one? “Mooooom, he’s doing exactly what you told him not to” says your child with a horribly self-satisfying smile.

It’s all kinds of ugly, friends, and we’ve done our time with all of it around here.

 

 

A few years back I began to think and pray about this struggle in training my children, and wouldn’t you know the Bible, our very own road map for life, talks a bit about what to do when your brother offends you.  In Matthew chapter 18 Jesus, in plain verbiage even a 5 year old can understand, lays out a strategy for what to do when our brothers or sisters offends us.  Guess what? We don’t have to re-invent the wheel, friends!  So following that lead and throwing in a little creativity here is the model we use to topple tattling in our home.

 

STEP 1:  Teach your children the Biblical model for dealing with frustrations with others.  Their job is to drop the emotion and talk rationally with the other person.  If that is not effective they may then kindly request backup.  I realize, wrangling those emotions is tough for little people, but as parents we must seek to train them in righteousness.  So, while we don’t expect them to nail it every time, we do expect them to work on it and show progress as they grow in maturity. “That is my favorite toy. May I please have it back?”  Is definitely progress over “Give me that now!” and “Mom, we are having trouble coming to an agreement. Can you help us, please?” is progress over “Mooooom, he’s is the meanest brother EVER!”

Try role playing this with your kids.  It might feel awkward or a little silly, but that keeps it light and makes the learning fun.  The goal here is to show your children how best to handle frustrations and give them the tools to do it properly.  Practicing this when they aren’t emotional lays the proper foundation to implement it when things get heated. Unfortunately, we often expect results from children when we haven’t trained them in proper behavior.  Set up no-fail scenarios when the stakes aren’t high and you will be surprised how quickly they can form new habits.

 

STEP 2: Get to the heart of the issue.  Often the real issue isn’t even what the kids are arguing about.  The toy, the last cookie, the taking turns, none of that is really the issue.  It’s the breaking down of relationships, the rapid anger and selfish greed, the failure to love well, to show compassion, to be patient or kind or humble that is causing the problem.  These are tough concepts for little people – actually, they are tough concept for big people!  But that is the language I want my kids to hear.  “Knock it off!” or “Can’t you guys just share?” don’t really take my kids where I want them to go.  They need me, eye to eye, speaking truth and teaching them, showing them, how we can work through our messy sin issues.  Our kids need us doling out grace and giving them hope that we can work through hard stuff.  They need to know there are mountains of forgiveness that can patch up all kinds of family messes, mend all kinds of broken relationships and it is our job to teach them that.

 

 

Step 3: Help your kids begin to intentionally see the good in one another.  Yes, we need to address bad behavior, but it can also helpful to employ positive reinforcement to reward good behavior.  Over the years we have created a little game in our home called Caught Being Kind and we reinstate it every now and again when tattling seems to rear its ugly head.  It goes something like this.  Everyone is to be on the lookout for someone else going out of their way to be kind – whether it’s helping with extra chores, trying to console a younger sibling, doing things without asking or anything else that might be deemed an unsolicited act of kindness.  Anyone who witnesses such behavior is to run and tell mom or dad about it (yes, we’re turning tattling on it’s head a bit).   Often we give the “tattler” a small treat like a quarter or a Hershey’s kiss which they then get the honor of giving to the sibling who was caught being kind.

The idea behind the game is simple and the result have been effective.  There is plenty of dirt that happens when mom is not looking…and someone is always eager to tell mom about it.  But there are plenty of great things that go unnoticed by parents as well.  When one of my children catches their siblings being kind, I want to know about it.  I want them to tattle about the great things they see each other doing more than the not so great.

 

As a mom, I want to help my children foster healthy sibling relationships.  We are called to love one another and sometimes, in the messiness of home life and the ages and stages of childhood, that gets challenging.  But think of the great training opportunities we have!  As parents we are called to lead and guide our children in loving well.  It is our responsibility to take them by the hand and walk them through those tricky sibling relationships and it is our job to provide them with the training and tools they need in order to do that in a Christ like manner.  If we can do that creatively it just makes learning all the more fun.

Wishing you the best as you, bravely, seek to lead your children well!

And for a creative way to curb complaining, checkout Arabah’s Grumbles Game.  I’m getting my clothes pins out and trying this one this week!