Featured Article:
Preventing Bullying with Young Children
Sam and Ben are playing in the sandbox. Both children reach for the sifter. Sam grabs the sifter first and Ben tries to wrestle it from him. Sam holds tightly to the sifter, and the boys angrily wrestle for the toy. The caregiver or teacher, seeing the incident, comes over to the sandbox to investigate. Was this bullying?
Sally and Maria are playing restaurant. Lisa approaches and wants to play, too. Sally says to Lisa, “I told you that you can’t ever play. We don’t want to play with you, and the rule is that you can’t play with us. Go away, or you’ll be sorry!” The early childcare and education provider, hearing Sally’s increasingly-used “threatening voice” asks the children what is happening. Did bullying occur in this situation?
When you think of a bully, you might not picture a young child. While bullying is more common in the elementary and secondary grades, it is important for early childcare and education programs to be aware that associated bullying behaviors begin early, even in the preschool years.
What is Bullying?
Bullying is physical or mental intimidation. Children who are bullied may have symptoms like sleeplessness, loss of appetite, upset stomach, and headaches. The mental and emotional toll of being bullied can include anxiety, depression, and lowered self-esteem. These feelings can persist even after the bullying has stopped, and some victims may require professional help.
And like their victims, bullies also suffer mentally and emotionally. As children, they struggle with peer interaction. This can manifest itself through impulsive or angry behavior, which further isolates them from other children. As adults, they are often aggressive and violent. Even children who are bystanders to bullying may suffer from anxiety, fear, and guilt and need help with working through those emotions.
Conflict vs. Bullying
Bullying and conflict are not the same. Conflict is a natural and necessary part of growing up, and children need to experience and navigate conflict. When two three-year-old children argue over who gets to play with a toy or who gets to go first, they are not engaged in bullying. They are having a conflict, which is important to developing negotiation skills.
Similarly, a two-year-old who grabs a toy from another child and runs away with it is not necessarily a bully. The child is developmentally not ready to share (some children do not master the art of sharing before age three or four) and simply needs more time and practice.
Bullying occurs when there is an unequal balance of power between two children, and one child repeatedly and deliberately intimidates or abuses the other. A five-year-old who habitually taunts or threatens a fearful three-year-old is bullying. A four-year-old who repeatedly teases or acts aggressively toward another four-year-old she perceives as weaker or vulnerable is also bullying.
In conflict, all the children involved are similarly emotional, whereas in a bullying situation the victim is typically very upset while the bully remains relatively calm. Often, bullies make up rules and force their victims to follow them. Preschool-age children enjoy making up rules; but when a child uses those rules to repeatedly exclude, humiliate, or control another child, it becomes bullying.
Bullying can be physical, verbal, or emotional. Boys frequently bully and are the victims of bullies, but girls bully, too. Boys typically use physical aggression (like hitting, pushing, and kicking) to bully, while girls frequently use social exclusion and taunting, such as barring a child from playing with a group or making fun of a child.
Characteristics
Both bullies and their victims tend to have certain characteristics. Children who are bullies may grow up in homes where aggression is considered normal behavior. Frequently, children who bully have not had clear limits and boundaries for appropriate behavior established at home.
Bullies struggle more than other children to feel empathy and compassion for others and may feel little or no guilt for their actions. Bullies like to be “in charge” and are often very “bossy” in their interactions and play with other children.
Victims of bullies often struggle with making friends or are socially awkward, which isolates them and makes them more vulnerable to bullying. They may be children who tend to be anxious or timid, cry frequently or are physically small, which makes them appear weaker to other children. Also, overweight children or children with disabilities are vulnerable to bullying.
There are many reasons young children engage in bullying, including jealousy, their desire to gain adults’ attention, or as a means to get something they want. Young children are naturally self-centered, and they tend to look at things only from their own point of view; so it may be difficult for a young child who is bullying to see why it is harmful to the victim.
Preventing Bullying
Remember to model compassion and empathy for the children on a daily basis. Plenty of adult supervision, establishing firm limits and expectations of behavior, and consistent, appropriate consequences for misbehavior also will curb bullying.
When it happens, bullying requires immediate intervention. Young children cannot cope with bullying alone; and if it is not addressed, the bullying typically escalates. What should you do if you see bullying between children in your care? The victim needs reassurance that the bullying will stop, and encouragement that will help him or her become less fearful and more confident.
Because children who are singled out as victims by bullies often have few friends, they may need help in developing positive relationships. Bullies need to understand that their behavior is unacceptable and hurtful and that there are inevitable and appropriate consequences to bullying. Like their victims, they frequently need help establishing friendships.
Children who are bystanders to bullying may experience anxiety that they could be bullied themselves, and they too, need reassurance that adults will keep them safe and protected. They also need to be taught skills for stopping the bullying and/or for reporting it.
Early childhood curricula give childcare providers many opportunities for discussing bullying with children. Story times, puppets, daily conversations, and sharing times are all chances to talk about compassion, empathy, and caring.
Outdoor play is important and fun for children, but it is also when children are most vulnerable to bullying. Adults need to be alert and watchful to help curb playground bullying. Games and activities that require children to cooperate also can help.
Check out our Bullying Basics class and other classes on bullying.
Source: Marna Holland, Parent Educator, Asheville, NC, City Schools Preschool
Helpful Hints:
Five Tips to Help Teachers Prevent Bullying
Even when a school leader doesn't have a formal bullying prevention agenda, teachers can create safe, bully-free zones in their classrooms:
Know Your School and District Policies on Bullying Do your part to implement them effectively.
Treat Students and Others with Warmth and Respect Let students know that you are available to listen and help them.
Conduct Classroom Activities around Bullying Help your class identify bullying in books, TV shows and movies, and discuss the impact of that bullying and how it was/could be resolved. Hold class meetings in which students can talk about bullying and peer relations.
Discuss Bullying with Colleagues As a group, you will be better able to monitor the school environment. Discuss both bullying in general and concerns regarding specific students.
Take Immediate Action Failure to act provides tacit approval of the behavior and can cause it to spread.
Check out our Bullying Basics class and other classes on bullying.
(These tips were adapted from NEA's
Bully Free: It Starts With Me and AFT's
See A Bully, Stop A Bully campaign resources.)
Creative Corner:
Anti-Bullying Games for Kids
Studies confirm that between 15 percent to 25 percent of U.S. students are bullied with varying frequency, states the Health and Human Services
Stop Bullying website. Bullying at school, home or in the neighborhood can leave victims feeling powerless, anxious, angry and depressed. Government and private organizations work with school systems and parents nationwide in anti-bullying campaigns designed toward prevention and intervention. Anti-bullying education includes role-playing techniques and games that teach kids how to better cope with bullies. Educational Online Games
Many online games designed to entertain as well as teach children important lessons about bullying flourish on the Internet. McGruff.org's Shrink the Cyberbully is an animated question-answer game that quizzes children about appropriate responses to handle growing numbers of cyberbullies. Stop Bullying Now! And PBS Kids websites also contain animated games that test children's knowledge of the best ways to "beat the bully."
Tolerance and Respect
An anti-bullying game based on Simon Says teaches children that other students have shared qualities and differences, likes and dislikes. One student becomes "Simon" and directs the other players to do what Simon says. The Education world website illustrates how the student will make a statement such as, "Simon says 'Everyone who likes caramel corn, stand up,'" and caramel-corn lovers obey and stand. When the game is over, a teacher or facilitator asks the students to identify one new thing they learned about another student that wasn't already known. The game demonstrates diversity and similarity shared by all students, and helps kids learn to be tolerant of others.
Games to Help Express Emotions
Other games, such as the Anger Suit described on the Education World website, allow children to explore feelings of anger and frustration. A child puts on an old suit or overcoat and must act out what anger looks, sounds and feels like. Teachers or parents encourage the child to fully examine the emotion of anger in the bully and the bully's target during a period of conflict. Children discuss how to cope with and resolve bullying situations, and the anger associated with it.
Strategy Games
A game called "A Safe Pair of Hands," designed by Jenny Mosley Consultancies for Circle Time Sessions in the U.K., first teaches children the meaning of the expression "lend a hand." After children grasp the meaning of the phrase, each child in the group tosses a pair of dice. The first child to roll an even number grabs a card from a box or a bag that makes a statement about a bullying situation. Others in the group make suggestions to solve the problem on the statement by first saying, "I can lend you a hand. Would it help if you/I/we...?" Children are thanked and praised for the suggestions.
The Swarm Practice
The Ask A Cop website suggests kids band together to create The Swarm whenever they witness bullying incidents. Children practice duplicating the swarming behavior of bees, moving together as a group fresh from the hive toward a bully and her target to remove the victim and defuse the situation. The website states that people "who try to intimidate others by mean words or actions fall apart when they face a force bigger than their own."
Check out our Bullying Basics class and other classes on bullying.
Source: Mary Osborne, Livestrong.com
