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April 2, 2006

‘I’m telling!!’

By Michelle Martin

We have more than one child. Therefore, our family has become embroiled in the Tattletale Wars.

Anyone who has more than one child, or has spent time with more than one child, knows how it works: one pokes or prods or looks cross-eyed at the other, often in the back seat of the car, and the other responds with the time-honored cry of “I’m telling! Mom!”

The aim is not to sue for relief. It’s to get the upper hand by getting the other child in trouble. Such cries (at least in our car) are usually met with, “Both of you, keep your hands to yourselves and stop tattling.”—which has remarkably little effect, judging by how soon it happens again.

Of course, tattling—and what qualifies for that term—is a judgment call. Most kids don’t have the opportunities for unsupervised play that I had when I was growing up, when we could leave the house to go out and play in the morning and stay gone more or less all day, only showing up at home for meals. Now kids are under the watchful eyes of parents, teachers or other caregivers nearly all the time, meaning there’s nearly always someone available to tattle to.

At the same time, we tell kids to tell an adult about any number of dangerous situations: if they see someone with a weapon, or with drugs, or doing something dangerous. Telling in those situations is necessary, and not tattling.

So when Caroline came to me in first grade and asked when she should tell the teacher about other kids’ misbehavior, we drew the line this way: If someone was doing something that could hurt them or someone else, she should tell. Otherwise, let the teacher deal with it. So someone is starting a food fight in the cafeteria? Tell. Someone is using her lunch to build an edible Leaning Tower of Pisa? Leave it alone.

The message doesn’t always get through, and I’ve been known to say that I could have gone my whole life without knowing that so-and-so did such-and-such.

But now for Caroline the equation has changed.

Preparing for her First Communion later this year, she had her first reconciliation, the first time she had to sit down and, in a way, tell on herself. She was well prepared, with class discussions of the distinctions between accidents, mistakes and sin, and the way God welcomes us when we are sorry. She also learned that to sin harms her because it hurts her relationship with God.

Reconciliation offers a way to help heal that hurt, but it comes at a cost: finding enough courage and enough humility to voice out loud the bad things we have done. For children, who learn the phrase “It’s not my fault” seemingly days after “Mama,” “Dada” and “No,” that’s a big step. No wonder the church was full of anxious kids who couldn’t sit still at the beginning of the service.

I don’t know what she told the priest who heard her confession, and I don’t know what he told her; that’s between her, him and God. But I do know that afterward, she was happy and calm, and she said she was glad she had her reconciliation.