Tattling/telling on each other

[Momof4]

Ok, well there's the difference. I'm NOT a babysitter. I'm a Home Daycare Provider and a Teacher and I take my job seriously and it's me and 5 children at a time and they are getting quality, amazing care from me and I'm extremely proud of it and so are the parents in my care.

You're running a large scale operation and you're in it for the money and that's great for you. I'm in it for a living and also to start children off on the right path in life.

[daycarewhisperer]

Ok, well there's the difference. I'm NOT a babysitter. I'm a Home Daycare Provider and a Teacher and I take my job seriously and it's me and 5 children at a time and they are getting quality, amazing care from me and I'm extremely proud of it and so are the parents in my care.

You're running a large scale operation and you're in it for the money and that's great for you. I'm in it for a living and also to start children off on the right path in life.

I'm a babysitter and have eight children with a full time staff assistant. I don't have a large scale operation but I definitely am in it for the money. I got to feed the blue eyed son and support myself.

I'm NOT a teacher but I do give high quality and amazing care. My kids do extremely well in school and I have long term clients. I'm in my twentieth year of doing home child. That's a LONG time of being successful doing the wrong thing.

I do not believe it is my place to teach children about tattling. I'll leave that to their parents. Here, I want children to enjoy each other and play toys. I don't want them to spend any of their time here learning about when to tattle and how they feel about tattling. They have their entire school life to sort that out. From birth to five they can just follow my lead and focus on entertaining themself and playing with the other kids. When they get off to school their licensed educated teacher can take that on. She/he will be educated to steer them in the right direction. I don't have an education or interest in this part of their early childhood "education". I'll leave that to the professionals like you.

[Serendipity]

I agree with daycarewhisperer. I think way too much focus and attention is placed on things our parents never even gave a second thought to. I think that if we give this much attention and time to tattling, we are setting the kids up to think tattling IS a big deal when really it is nothing more than a bid for attention and not a cue for a need. Children who are tattling, are seeking out atttention for something they think is wrong or amiss. I will allow a child to tell me when someone else is hurt or in danger but if they tell me so and so took their toy or said something they didn't like, I too will just say "Thanks for letting me know, now go play." 99.9% of the time kids who tattle are simply looking for validation and not necessarily any action on my part. I thank them and let them figure it out.

I too have a very closely supervised group so most the time I KNOW no one is coming to tell me someone hit someone or hurt another child as I would see that immediately and don't need a 3 yr old to come tell me that. If all they are looking for is validation, I give them that. The skills to figure it out amongst themselves is something I cannot facilitate. That is something they HAVE to learn to figure out on their own just like everyone else did during childhood. If I walk them through the entire process every time, they never learn to do it themselves and then we end up with a bunch of kids who can't take the initive and figure out how to manage things on their own.
I give kids massive amounts of attention for doing positive things and tattling is not one of those things I ever want them to believe is a positive social behavior because it simply isn't.

I like the idea of having the tattler go tell a younger kid. Many many early childhood centers in my community use a talking turtle or a giant paper ear on the wall and encourage kids to tattle to the turtle or the ear. I would think it has the same learning concept as telling the youngest kid.

[daycarewhisperer]

One thing too. As serendipity and myself have staff assistants... the truth is that having a child who does what previous poster described ... three years of dealing with it and driving the adult crazy... would be very expensive to administer and would cause the helper to leave.

I couldn't afford to do that kind of education for a three year old. It would cost me too much in staff time and it would most likely cause my assistant to move on. I have to vet out stuff like this that is a huge draw to the adult time because I'm actually paying someone for it. When my worker is here I don't want to devote our cash resources to something we can manage for free by having the child go tell the youngest walker. The youngest walker doesn't receive salary.

I think we just make way too much of our role with kids and how important every little aspect of childhood is. We don't have to serve EVERYTHING about the child. We are not charged to teach them EVERYTHING. The beauty of self employment is that we get to pick and choose where we divest our time and resources. If we don't want to take on THIS aspect of childhood or "education" we can say no to it.

[Skysue]

Not to be rude but give me a break ladies we are all in it for the money! This is our profession, it's how we make a living. If we weren't on this forum then it would mean we only care about the money.

Tattling drives me crazy and mostly because my tattler is my own daughter. LOL She really does have to learn to use her words and try and deal with the situation on her own. Too many people bubble rap kids these days and don't let them problem solve on there own plus why do we need to engage everything they do?

I tell my daughter that tattling is not nice and she needs to use her words and address the situation on her own. Then I drop the situation, and yes if she is coming to me to tell me that little Johnny is on the coffee table again you can bet I'm saying thank you.

They need to know that coming to us to talk about things is important but they also need to know what's important vs what's not really a big deal.

Being a great teacher cannot be taught or learned it is core values and character.

I don't have a piece of paper that says I'm a teacher but I am and I'm proud to say I'm really good at what I do. All of us are and don't ever let anyone say different because they have a piece of paper. PLUS we are all daycare providers, period.