Tattling/telling on each other

[Momof4]

Well, I take my job very seriously as a teacher and caregiver and I want the children to learn life lessons from me, so I don't just tell them to go away from me without helping them, so I still disagree. It's very important to me to start these children on a good road in life with proper habits and empathy for others and manners so I work WITH the children and don't just tell them to leave me alone. I still don't see how it helps a child with your method. So once again we should agree to disagree I suppose. There's a lot of that happening on this forum this week!

[daycarewhisperer]

Well, I take my job very seriously as a teacher and caregiver and I want the children to learn life lessons from me, so I don't just tell them to go away from me without helping them, so I still disagree. It's very important to me to start these children on a good road in life with proper habits and empathy for others and manners so I work WITH the children and don't just tell them to leave me alone. I still don't see how it helps a child with your method. So once again we should agree to disagree I suppose. There's a lot of that happening on this forum this week!

I think it comes to that we have different jobs. I'm a babysitter. I'm not a teacher. I'm not in the business of addressing every possible life lesson with the kids. I don't want to help them with tattling etiquitte. (sp?).

I also have a full time staff assistant and a ratio of one adult to four kids. There isn't much that goes on that goes on beyond a few feet from an adult when the kids are up and playing. The chances of them seeing something that we didn't see is low... not impossible... but low. When you are doing the level of supervision we do here they don't have much opportunity to act out with each other without the pre-behaviors getting nipped before the big behaviors happen. We do close/proximal direct visual supervision at ALL times when the kids are free playing.

This kind of supervision quashes most behaviors that would be tattle worthy. So a kid in my home would just be enlisting an adult for one to one attention with a constant barrage or narative of what the other kids were doing. We don't have to spend much time vetting something out because whatever happens happens within our line of supervision.

When the little injustices occur they are quickly seen and corrected. I don't allow a child to monopolize an adult by insisting that the adult interact with them. We give equal attention to everyone and the kids must accept their portion. Tattling (engaging an adult) eventually draws from the attention pool for the other kids. I am not in the business of petting an unstable mind. I have confidence that how I'm supervising and correcting is fair and complete.

I like things to be lighthearted and easy going. If a kid tattles and it's really of no consequence I want to move on quickly and get the kid back to "go play toys". I don't want their time and energy going to engaging an adult when they could be building a castle, doing a puzzle, or rolling a car. Playing WITH toys and each other is the number one activity here. Tattling is an activity that is very very low on my scope so it gets a very very low amount of adult in response.