It is a parent’s responsibility to sensitize his or her child to the evils of loshon hora and help the child to develop self-control in this area. At the same time, it is a parent’s responsibility to provide his or her child with emotional support and assistance. The overzealous parent can cause a child irreparable harm by forever scolding when reassurance is in order; however, failure to discipline one’s child is no less harmful. One must learn to discern between situations where a child is relating an incident because he needs his parent’s help, and when he is speaking loshon hora for no good reason.
A child should be taught that if interesting events of the day include negative facts about others, then names should be omitted. To relate how a certain child misbehaved in class is to speak loshon hora, even if what that child did was clever and amusing. Conversely, it is perfectly correct for a child to reveal the identity of a boy who interferes with his own activity or disrupts him during class time.
