It isn’t easy to teach your child the difference between telling about a problem and tattling about a situation. Even parents do not always know the difference. You need to know when things happen that could be harmful or dangerous.

These are times you want your child to be sure to talk with an adult to prevent something harmful from happening. At other times, your child just needs help in how to handle difficult situations. Your child needs to learn to understand the difference.

When your child is young, you need to help him learn how to settle arguments with his siblings and friends. Talk with him about how he has handled the situation and then discuss whether it helped or did not help. Remember, when you step in and help solve the problem, he also learns from you.

Certainly as he grows older, he needs to learn to handle small hassles by himself. You cannot, nor should you, try to settle each little argument. Listening helps because sometimes your child really wants you to pay attention to him or to see that he is being good.

But your older child needs to learn how to handle problems like these on his own. You can help by rehearsing ways to solve disagreement with others. This helps.

Talk together and come up with ways to handle problems and put a list on the refrigerator.

One school in a rural area encouraged children to try two alternatives before asking for help:

• Asking the other

person to stop

• Counting to 10

• Playing something different

• Walking away

• Sharing and taking turns

• Ignoring it

• Talking it out

• Apologize

• Trying one of the

above again

Prevent bullying

Parents do not want their child to be bullied or their child to bully another child. To prevent this kind of behavior, it needs to be talked about with the parents and the child. It is worth investing time to help your child learn how to deal with problems with other children or with siblings. Actually, these are areas we all need to work on.

Tattling versus telling is an area we need to talk with our child about. It is one of those subjects that can be discussed time and time again. It is also a time to send the message to your child that you believe in him as he uses maturity in handling these situations.

This is a time for you to be able to show him that you really believe he can learn to do the right thing.

The talks you have with your child are meaningful in many ways. Your child learns to explore potential problems, to discuss different ways to do that, to be able to express himself, to learn to solve problem solutions and to have a mature discussion with a parent. These things alone make the discussions useful and meaningful.

These discussions lay the foundation for many other useful discussions you can have in the future.

Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and former executive director of Parenting Matters Foundation, which publishes newsletters for parents, caregivers and grandparents. For more information, email to info@firstteacher.org or call 360-681-2250.