sibling squables

My friend Renee posted about already dealing with the sibling squables now that her kids are out of school for the summer. (Ha! Angela isn't out of school until June 11th!) Her post reminded me of how I handled that problem when my boys were little.

When the boys were kids, I established "The Taddler Rule". I was tired of the constant taddling (Ugh! Bryon was the WORST!) and didn't want to hear about anything unless the person was bleeding, unconcious, or (in the case of my house full of boys) doubled over and unable to talk due to a well-aimed throw or something similar! Keep in mind there was NO wrestling allowed in our house, and no hitting of any kind, so those types of things were never really a problem, but the constant bickering was driving me crazy!

And so "The Taddler Rule" came to be. You see, the taddler got into the same trouble as the taddlee!  So, the boys REALLY had to think if they wanted to taddle about something. If it was something serious, they knew there was nothing to worry about, but if it was something silly like, "He's bugging me!" they knew they were going to get into trouble right along with the person doing the bugging. 

As they boys were getting used to the new rule and how it worked, there were a few times when one would come to taddle, and I'd ask them, "Before you taddle, I want you to think about weather it's worth it or not? Are you REALLY hurt? (or is someone else if they were sent to taddle by one of the other brothers) If they were SURE it was worth telling me about, (No mom, really, it's worth it! Noah was in my room AGAIN!") then I'd say, "What do you think Noah's consequence should be?" So, I would dish out that consequence to BOTH boys! Needless to say, there were many tears. But, it only took about a week for everyone to figure out I was serious!

This worked GREAT, and totally ended the tattling in our house! Funny, if they knew I wasn't going to do anything about it, they were able to solve their little disputes themselves. I also knew that when someone came running to tell me something, I knew there was REALLY something wrong.