![]() Often they’re simply following the “no tattling” rule they learned at home or in school at a young age. We are often surprised by children’s silence in these cases, but we shouldn’t be. But the witnessing children told no one, and their silence emboldened those experimenting with bullying to go even further. Frequently we see reports of school officials who uncover bullying and learn that many students knew of prior incidents involving the same children. Such inadvertent but powerful messages clearly work against the culture of emotional and physical safety we want to establish for our children. If I tell when someone does something bad, I’m being bad, too. It leads to a “culture of silence” in our schools and sends children disheartening and confusing messages:Īdults say they care, but they won’t listen to my problems. ![]() While perhaps well-intentioned, discouraging tattling creates more problems than it solves. Indeed, some schools enact tattling bans, and many well-meaning teachers ask me how to “enforce” such bans. I know from teaching young children myself how challenging it can be to face a seemingly endless parade of students reporting things to you as you’re trying to teach.įiguring out how to deal with what we commonly call “tattling” can take a significant amount of time and energy and, as a result, teachers are often tempted to tell children to keep problems to themselves. “Jaime isn’t lining up in the right place.” ApCategories: Discipline / Reminding, Redirecting, and Reinforcing Language / Teacher Language
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