By Kerri Havnen Gordon

The Living Experiment

When our children were toddlers, our mom’s group embraced the message that it takes a village to raise a child. Not only did we chat about the nice things our children did; but when the children erred, we talked about that, too. These conversations left us feeling tremendously supported in our roles as parents.

Those toddlers are now on the cusp of becoming teenagers. We hope that we have given them the tools to make sound, healthy and kind choices while they navigate worlds that, increasingly, are more their worlds than ours. Things get tricky when they make mistakes which their parents may not be privy to, but which other parents are.

At some indistinguishable point along the parenting path, I began to notice a disconnect among parents with respect to open communication concerning kids’ behavior. Exchanges between parents that used to be within the spirit of “it takes a village” are now occasionally viewed as tattletaling.

One day last year, I overheard a grade school boy utter a sentence laced with profanity and sexually-explicit content. I wondered if I should mention it to the parent. After all, I would want to know if my kids uttered such things. Unsettled about how the mother would respond, I ended up saying nothing, unfortunately. The boy’s parents were not given the opportunity to coach their son on this particular matter.

In another situation, I sensed the mother would respond well to a mildly touchy topic, and she did. We had a pleasant, nonjudgmental mother-to-mother exchange, which later prompted a great conversation between her and her son.

This mom told her son that he might as well tell her if he has made a bad choice, because she’ll find out anyway; and he will fare better if she hears it straight from him. The message is that there is a flow of information among parents. This perception of unity among parents may serve him well as he ventures towards independence.

Despite this positive exchange, these days it feels a bit like a minefield in the parent community. I fear that the village is becoming less about supporting each other in the raising of children and more about somehow factoring in the desire to not “tattletale” and offend other parents. Undeniably, it is uncomfortable to talk with other parents about behavioral issues. The moms I know who have faced this dilemma have felt very conflicted.

Nonetheless, I have a problem when we parents place our own comfort levels ahead of our willingness to share information which could be helpful to another family. Perhaps this stems from the hugely erroneous notion that occasional bad choices automatically translate into bad kids or bad parenting. The consequence is that suddenly the village has to tread lightly due to parental egos, differing family values or a misplaced definition of tattletaling.

I had no idea how contentious this issue was until it dominated a conversation with six friends one evening. The discussion was spirited, to say the least, evenly divided among the mothers in three ways - those who believe that parents want to know, those who are vehemently against the idea of tattletaling and those who recognize that a gray area exists in between.

My instincts tell me to share respectfully information that I would want to hear and to respectfully hear information I may not like, while appreciating that what parents do with sensitive information about their own children is entirely a private matter. In the end, I value our village the most when the line of communication among parents remains open and supportive.

Gordon’s column is published the second week of the month. Send comments and suggestions to: Livingexperiment@pacbell.net