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One thing a lot of people don’t know is, teaching kindergarten means dealing with problems that adults would never even consider problems.

Someone’s shirt has ketchup on it. Timmy looked at me twice and I don’t like it. Joanne is chewing with her mouth open.

Even as an adult, I’d like it if I could report annoyances like this to someone in charge. So naturally when a teacher got a “tattle phone” for her kindergarten students, they used it.

The rules were simple: emergencies and genuine safety concerns still needed to be brought directly to a teacher, but the everyday complaints could be recorded on the phone instead.

The kids absolutely loved it.

Perhaps a little too much.

Read the full story below.

AITA for creating a “Tattle Phone”

I (29f) am a kindergarten teacher at a school in my hometown. And those of you who know kids in that age range, they LOVE to tattle.

All day long I will hear “Mrs. OP. Johnny is looking at me and I don’t want him to”.

“Mrs. OP. In lunch today Steve was chewing with his mouth open” on and on…. Sometimes the kids will race to me to get their tattles in first.

It was getting to a point where I would hear up to 20 tattles every single day. So I decided to come up with a solution.

I bought a voice recorder shaped like a rotary phone for my class.

This is a cute idea. But it also had some serious implications.

When I brought this to my class. I started by saying this:

“Okay class. Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of tattling going on. It’s getting a little silly. Let’s go over what a tattle tale is, v we need to talk to an adult.”

When explaining when to tell an adult, I said “if you are getting hurt; or you see your friend getting hurt, then you should ALWAYS tell a teacher”.

Then I gave the examples of tattle tales like the ones listed above. I even made a game out of it on “tattle tales v tell a teacher.”

Then I presented the phone. I showed them how to use it.

And they used the phone, alright.

Then I explained the times they are allowed to use it. And it was a hit!!!!

The first week of using it, I had over 150 tattle tales. All ranging from someone picking their nose, someone passing gas at recess, someone got ketchup on their shirt, etc.

Well one day I received a call from a disgruntled parent.

They said “Charley cho came to me and said you wouldn’t listen when he wanted to tell you what someone did.” (This kid’s tattle tale was someone was making faces at him).

But now she sees how this can be misunderstood.

I explained what I did with this tattle phone and she degraded me with “you’re not listening to the kids”.

I told my coworkers about my new strategy, and most are on my side. One teacher has said that this can make it seem like that I don’t want to listen to the kids. I personally think I am in the right.

Of course if a child comes to me with an emergency, I will always listen and jump into action, and I made that clear to my students. But before I came up with this plan.

I swear I was stoping every 5 seconds of lesson time with a child telling me that someone was making fart noises in class.

AITA?

There are probably solutions to this that don’t involve her having to stop to listen to every tattle tale. What did Reddit think?

This is genius.

Interesting.

Something to consider.

A commenter shares their thoughts.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who was denied a raise for “not being dedicated enough,” but then went on to discover what was really going on behind the scenes.

Another reader chimes in.

Having a tattle tale notebook could teach them to write while lowering the number of times they tell on someone for minor things.

Of course, kids like attention and will want to share more and more if they feel what they’re saying is important. And it is important to give them space to share.

Of course the biggest concern is whether a system like this could make children feel as though their teacher doesn’t want to hear them, but she definitely could not go on being interrupted that many times a day.

Another concern is that there is a balance between a helpful citizen and a Karen, though.