Teach Your Children the Difference Between “chatting” and “reporting”
I’ve never been a fan of the word “chatter”. Maybe because my northeastern Ohio accent really drowns out the harsh a sound, which makes the word itself almost as annoying as the practice. tAAAttling .
Or maybe because when your child first begins the time-honored tradition of talking about their siblings and friends, it can be difficult to explain why you don’t want to know that someone is doing something they shouldn’t. After all, as parents, we essentially spend all day telling them to stop doing what they are not supposed to do.
No, we don’t want to know that Johnny used a bad word, even if we told him that, if we heard it ourselves. But wait, yeah, we DO want to know if Johnny is playing with matches. Poke your finger in your face? No, it’s not . Struggling to climb the roof? YES .
My son is an only child, but my husband and I were foster parents a couple of times. That year, when my son was five and we had a four-year-old in our care, gossip was raging in our house. Finally, consciously trying not to say “chatter” at all, I began to use the phrase: “Is anyone sad or unsafe? Not? Come back to the game. ” But even that was not entirely true; a lot of annoying things can upset a person.
I recently stumbled upon the same dilemma from a parent on Reddit . 3InARow has a four-year-old son, and he admitted that his chatter could be helpful:
To be honest, I like it! There are times when I need to use the toilet or grab something from the top floor, and he minimized the clutter in the family room because he warned me before things got too bad.
Primary school teacher, “dinosaur_boots”, jumped in with one of the best explanations I’ve ever seen regarding chatter versus reporting:
A message is useful information that the child considers important to share (bullying, making a big mess, etc.). You will usually find this useful, even if there is nothing special about it. Tattling is simply trying to get someone into trouble. It may be true, and the child being talked about should not do what he does, but it may not be that important.
DarlinMermaidDarlin also encouraged children to ask themselves a series of questions before they start arguing / communicating:
- It’s true?
- This is useful?
- It is important?
- It’s necessary?
- Is this good?
Another simple but clear explanation from “Akember007”:
Tattling: You just want to get someone in trouble. Speaking: caring for something / someone.
Here’s the last definition my eight-year-old son said: “ Chatting is something like, ‘ Waaaa, he took my toy! “ ” This is something that doesn’t really matter, and you can handle it yourself. Communicate something important, such as when someone is bleeding or vomiting. “