TattleTale

Back in my day, my grandmother was fond of telling me “No one likes a tattletale.” And she would tell me stories about how when she was little, if she ratted out one of her siblings she would have to pin a fake tail on her backside and wear it around all day.

Nowadays we prefer that our children tell us everything. If someone picks on the Mud Puddle, the daycare rule is that you tell them “No Thank You” and make sure to report it to the closest teacher.
I am all in favor of this policy. Sure no one likes a tattletale but no one likes getting tossed headlong off the slide by the ‘special’ kid with no recourse either.

I would LOVE to be able to teach him to retaliate, to kick a little toddler booty when he is being pushed around but alas, that is no longer the world we live in. Gone are the days of ‘eye for an eye’, ‘punch for a punch’. So tattling it is!

Now, this is all well and good when he is commenting on how he was maligned by a peer, but when he starts ratting ME out, that is another story entirely.

Monday night I picked him up from daycare and he had spent the better part of the day outside playing. It looked like he had spent the day smearing dirt all over himself and seeing how far he could imbed it under his fingernails.
When we got settled and had dinner I told him it was time for a bath. I JOKINGLY said to him (probably more than once) that I should have Daddy hook up the hose and just clean him off in the driveway as he was probably going to leave a ring in the bathtub (which he did).
He giggled and found that pretty funny.
I spent five minutes cleaning his fingernails and tell him he would probably have to soak over night to come clean. Teehee. He found that pretty funny as well.

So Tuesday morning we head to daycare and I sit with him while he has his breakfast (his second breakfast of the day, the old Goose Gut). He informs the teacher that I was going to “hose him down.”
I nearly fell off my toddler sized chair. I blush, stammer and try and explain that it was a joke and he was very dirty last night and at the time we all thought it was funny (all the while thinking ‘don’t call DHS, don’t call DHS’).
Luckily, the teacher found it amusing – she had seen him the previous day after all – and we all giggled together, the Mud Puddle reiterating ‘hose me down’ for effect.

Apparently I am going to have to watch what I say a little more (I already edit out like 12% of the expletives). I am too funny sometimes for my own good.