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I'm just curious what "rules of thumb" you all use regarding tattling. My DD(5) spends a lot of time lately talking about what her brother is doing wrong. Today I wanted them to spend a few minutes picking up the playroom. DD put most of her effort towards telling me that her brother was either not doing his fair share or was doing things to pester her. The trouble is, her brother really can be a pest. (He's almost 4). He tends to be impulsive and will hit, throw, take toys, break things - all at the level of "very annoying" rather than "out of control". On the other hand, my DD will frequently do things to goad her brother INTO doing the things he's not supposed to (saying mean things under her breath, for example).
My son's behavior is a larger issue and we're dealing with that. I'm just having a difficult time today finding the line of fairness in regards to my DD. I don't want her tattling and I want her to learn that she has some responsibility to treat her brother kindly. On the other hand, it isn't fair that she simply put up with his peskiness either. {sigh}
Advice?
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I tell my tattletale that Stalin would be proud and I address her as Comrade McLeninkoff when she tattles. (bad me). She's 4. I also tell her that unless the other sibling is doing something like bleeding or on fire, I don't need to know it. I direct her to engage in whatever activity she is supposed to be doing and then wander over to see what the others are doing just to make sure they aren't burning the house down.
In your case, you might try to put them together into a situation where they must cooperate with each other in order to do a tasks and get the reward. The reward really needs to be something they want. An example is, if they want dessert after dinner, they must help each other by picking up the toys and placing them in the bin. If either one cries, screams, complains, leaves the room, etc, then no dessert. The activity must be completed without fighting or any nasty words. If you find that one is in the wrong every time, then the other child gets the reward for the good behavior.
At my house we discuss the difference between telling and tattling. If the behavior is going to cause someone to get hurt or something to get broken then it's telling, if not it's tattling. If you tattle you get in trouble. Telling is OK. But, when you tell you better be prepared to explain who you thought would get hurt and how or what was going to be broken. Mom has the final say on whether it was tattling or telling. When they run in and the first word out of their mouth is a sibling's name, then I often stop them and ask if they are telling or tattling, I remind them of the definition and ask them to think about it. A few weeks of that every time one of the kids went through a tattling phase seemed to work.
This always confused me as a kid and frankly still does. DD isn't allowed to tattle on her cousins (she hasn't tried tattling on the baby yet lol) but I wonder sometimes, in some situations, what that teaches her. Growing up, if we told on a sibling, we'd get in trouble. I see now why, but at the time my sibs and I pretty much took that to mean that we could get away with a lot of things our parents taught us were wrong as long as we didn't do it in front of them. There were a lot of times growing up where it probably would have been better if my parents had said, "If you guys can't get along then you need to go do something by yourselves" rather than saying "Stop tattling" because really, we did a lot of snide things to each other that didn't draw blood but that would have been forbidden if my parents knew about it. My parents were pretty strict...it was weird feeling like their rules about how to treat others only applied when they were around.Then again I know my parents couldn't address every thing we did wrong...they would have gone insane!Tattling when our parents were present was strictly not allowed. I hate it when DD does that...it drives me nuts and I tell her that I'm the adult and if something needs to be taken care of I will take care of it and I don't need her help.
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My daughter's preschool used Becky Bailey's approach to tattling. It worked beautifully and teaches children to be aware of what they are doing and appropriately assertive. It's always harder with siblings, of course. I looked to see if I could find an overview of how she recommends handling tattling. It was such a different approach from anything I had seen, but it virtually eliminated tattling and yet didn't have an impact of appropriate "telling." Here's a handout that gives an overview (page 2) [URL="http://caeyc.org/main/caeyc/proposals/pdfs/BaileyConflict.pdf"]http://caeyc.org/main/caeyc/proposals/pdfs/BaileyConflict.pdf[/URL] Susan