David Perry 
The Tell Tale Bird [EPUB ebook] 

This is a story about a family wherein the father was a football coach and shift supervisor who spent long hours away from home. This meant his wife had to discipline her three children, and she would tell him about them when he got home from work. The children thought of her as a telltale, and she was not as popular as her husband with them.
One day, the father found his wife crying as she heard her children saying that she was a telltale, so the father decided to do something about it, as he thought it was very unfair to his wife.
One day, he saw a little bird sitting on a tree, which gave him an idea. He told his wife about it, and they decided to try it, even though it was a white lie. So now when the children were naughty, instead of saying, Your mother said you were naughty, he would say, My little bird said you were naughty. That was when the telltale bird came into being.
From then on, when the father was informed that his children had been naughty by their mother, he would say, My little bird told me that . . .