Teaching kids the difference between ‘tattling’ and ‘telling’

Another school year has begun and par­ents are again faced with the emo­tional strain that a school year brings. Par­ents are deal­ing with their chil­dren being away at school for most of the day, and then home­work and extracur­ric­u­lar acti­vates fill the rest of the week. It is some­times dif­fi­cult for par­ents to spend much time with their kids. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that qual­ity time is more impor­tant than the quan­tity of time we spend with our kids.

Kids will expe­ri­ence a lot when they are at school and dur­ing extra cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties. Some kids may expe­ri­ence bul­ly­ing, dat­ing vio­lence, harass­ment, and other forms of vio­lent behav­ior. Oth­ers may not be the tar­get of vio­lent behav­ior but, they may wit­ness these types of behav­iors toward their friends or others.

Many men­tal health experts agree that kids who wit­ness school vio­lence can expe­ri­ence the same emo­tional and phys­i­cal effects as the tar­geted vic­tim. They may worry they will be tar­geted next or they may stress over not know­ing how to help the victim.

Ohio law requires all schools to have a sys­tem to report bul­ly­ing and most have a sys­tem to anony­mously report other types of school vio­lence, how­ever; most kids never report what they wit­ness. They do not think any­thing could be done about what they wit­nessed and oth­ers do not report because they have been taught not to tat­tle on others.

Par­ents need to make time to talk to their kids about their expe­ri­ences at school. If your child indi­cates he or she has wit­nessed some form of school vio­lence, it is impor­tant to encour­age them to report the inci­dent to school admin­is­tra­tors, coun­selors, or the school resource offi­cer. Kids need to under­stand that tat­tling is telling on some­body for a very minor infrac­tion for the sole pur­pose of get­ting that per­son in trou­ble and report­ing is telling when there is a chance some­one could be hurt. Regret over not telling is always more dif­fi­cult to deal with than telling some­one. Encour­ag­ing kids to report school vio­lence will help keep our kids safe both phys­i­cally and emotionally.

Keep­ing Our Kids Safe is brought to you by the Delaware Police Depart­ment and School Resource Offi­cer Rod Glazer.

Posted by Rod Glazer on Aug 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.