Tiny Bullies

Wow! I am working through this issue with my 5 year old daughter at the moment. She is the victim of bullying – and I have found out that she is not the only one being bullied in her class. For her, it's not a physical thing, but rather repetitive intimidation, bossiness and some anger. It really breaks my heart. It's hard to squash the Mama Lion like you said, as I want to roar, not only at the other child, but also at the parent of that child! Anyway, the teacher is aware (but also a new grad, so all this is new to her) – and we are talking through things at home. Hopefully she will know that she is loved and safe at home and can develop resilience based on that.

Thanks for sharing this. I will pop over and visit the other links.

It just makes me think of what can happen if they become big bullies…like that poor Rutgers student in the news last week who committed suicide when his roommate and another invaded his privacy. Bullying is serious business.

Great, great points. We as parents have so much work to do! I'm commenting on the fly this morning so I don't have the link at hand, but there was a terrific op-Ed in the NYT Week in Review section this past Sunday that talks about bullying and punishment in light of the Rutgers tragedy.

We need to get busy, stay vigilant and proactive. It's life and death stuff.

It's absolutely true that children can start bullying and being bullied at this young age (although when my brother-in-law called my 9 month old son a bully because he bonked his cousin on the head with a toy, I was furious at how inappropriate this is.)

I worry about my oldest being bullied and about my youngest being a bully. We spend a lot of time talking about how to treat people and how people should treat you. Hopefully, these conversations help, even at this age.

Wow, preschool age? Not dealing with this yet but filing this post away (hopefully to not deal with ever) for future reference!

What a powerful post! I think we assume that because the little pumpkins are so teeny, there is no bullying going on. Thanks for making folks aware of the situation and how to begin to resolve the problem!

This has been such a hot topic lately. I'm so glad it's getting this amount of attention. My daughter's preschool did a pretty good job of stopping bullying behavior. And I've been working with my daughter of being assertive and not giving what the bully wants by crying. So far, it's gone pretty well. I'm sure it'll get harder when she gets older.

Great post!

Joey made some great points! Treat others as you would have them treat you.

I know at some point my little guy will be a part of this. In fact, he hasn't wanted to go to daycare in a while (he goes 2 full days). He sometimes says someone is being mean to him but upon further probing it seemed that it was a case of someone not sharing a car he likes and things like that. However, you're now making me wonder! I'll chat with him today and hope he's not being bullied. Otherwise, I'll be chatting with the teachers!

There was a boy in Kate's preschool class last year who would pull on her pig tails and pick on other kids. Thankfully, he's not there this year.

Thank you for this post. During his first year of preeschool, my son all of a sudden started to continouosly push and hit other children in the classroom. We sat down with the teacher and the pedagogy director at the school to try to determine: 1) the reason behind the behavior, 2) what to do to stop it. It's been a year since that happenned and we've worked very hard to help him, so now the pushing and hitting is no longer an issue. He deals with conflict and frustration in appropriate ways now.
Although we as parents may not be at fault when our child starts to act like a bully, we definitely are responsible for recognizing behaviors that can lead to bullying and nipping them in the bud.
One of the lessons I learned from the experience was not to judge the parents of children who behave that way without knowing why it's happenning and what they are doing about it. It took us several months to help our son stop the aggressive behavior and during that time we were treated and judged very poorly by other parents.
Some of the things that helped us where:
-“catching” him doing things well and praising him
-reading stories about appropriate social behavior
-teaching him to define and identify feelings in him and in others
-role play with dolls and with us
-guidance and close supervision when playing with other children

I think a common misconception is that children will learn social skills by playing together. In reality, children learn social skills from the important adults in their lives, not other children.

Those teachable moments will undeniably present themselves when children play together, but if a mature adult is not around (or not enough adults to go around as in the case of school) to show children proper social skills, what can result is anti-social behavior.

A good book that I think pinpoints the root of many problems in our culture today is called “Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers.” The doctor who wrote it discusses how today's children have become peer-oriented (which leads to increased bullying, among other things)rather than adult-oriented and how that has harmed all of us. He also talks about what we can do to fix the problem.

Little bullies grow up to be big bullies, indeed. It's amazing how our children really reflect the world around us – what's considered acceptable, things portrayed in the media, etc. What's happening to the world we're living in?

Kristi, Live and Love…Out Loud
@TweetingMama

I agree with you 100%. This is NOT just a big-kid issue, and little ones who learn this style of interaction at such a tender age will only continue it as they get older. I commented on Cheryl's post yesterday that we are discussing this as part of my job at school. One of the most important ways we can start to stop this trend is to teach the bystanders what to do as well. There are several “roles” in a bullying episode, and each has a chance to make a difference.
Great post, thanks for making people think!

My 21-month-old son has bitten one child at the playground and pinched a few others, which of course is making me terrified that he will become one of these little bullies — or is he already? I would hope that he's in a very teachable phase of his life right now as he is learning to interact with other kids. We try to have little timeouts and sit with him to tell him why it's wrong to do these things. It's just hard to tell if he understands.

Thank you for this post. It encourages me to be diligent with my little guy, who can be such a sweetheart most of the time.

Fantastic post.

I have talked about bullies with both my children.

This was a great post! It is very sad that this starts much younger and already I have seen how sad it can be when other children are not being kind on the playground. Have a great night!

Mama Hen

Thank you, thank you for this post! Bullying does start early, and we need to address it early. We have a tendency to become concerned about it in upper elementary school, junior high, or high school where we witness a higher frequency rate. The roots of bullying have grown strong by then, though, and it's much harder to stop its flourishing.

We start dental care early to prevent tooth decay rather than starting only after finding a cavity. The same logic can be applied to behavior. If we teach bullying prevention and bullying refusal skills early, “epidemic” bullying won't be so prevalent later.

Jane Balvanz
Elementary School Counselor
Co-owner of A Way Through, LLC

You're right, bullying does start early on and parents need to step in at the onset. It breaks my heart that children are tormenting other children, whether emotionally or physically. It's great that parents like you are raising awareness for this right now so that the future generations can reap the benefits.

I recently posted on this very issue. When I said that I had told my daughter to walk away because turning the other cheek was not working, I was told that I shouldn't intervene. That annoyed me. It is our job as parents to intervene when it is necessary. This kids will be kids bullshit is just that BULL SHIT! it is bad behavior and should be stopped cold by parents and care givers. If I ever had an inkling that my child was the bully, believe me you they would be informed in no uncertain terms that it is wrong to prey on others. It makes me mad when people say that it is kids being kids, its not. It's stoppable if these parents would stop being lazy.I don't watch my thoughts, actions and words only to send my child out in the world to be demeaned because another parent is too lazy to correct their child's horrible behavior.Thanks for posting! here is my post, if you are interested http://motherhoodthetruth.blogspot.com/2010/09/ballerinas-behaving-badly.html
Happy Mothering!

This bullying thing really scares me – I subject Maya to the Spanish Inquisition every day after school to make sure nobody is bothering her. But I wonder if she'd tell me because I didn't bother to tell my parents!

Thanks for bringing attention to this very important topic. I hope that this month we can all make some progress on eliminating bullies from our schools!

Thanks for such an important post.

To answer your question, we haven't faced any preschool bullies, but we did face preschool discrimination. A neighborhood boy refused to play with my son on several occasions because of his hearing aids. I was disappointed that the mother (apparently) didn't try to use this situation as a teaching point.

Discrimination and bullies do exist even at this young age. You are absolutely right that it's the parent's responsibility to guide kids to be kind and accepting people.

hi dr. mom, thank you for your thoughtful and encouraging comment on my blog. i am glad you are writing about bullies…as much as i'd like to believe my baby king will never encounter bullies, i know they are common and do so much harm in a child's development. having awareness is key.

We had to pull our then 4th grader out of school mid year and finish teaching him at home b/c of the daily bullying about his name and his food allergies.

The parents couldn't have cared less.

I feel scared for the kinds of kids they're unleashing into the world.

I guess that's just me putting my values onto someone else, but I'd like to and hope to and can't think of a bigger blessing then children who become adults who make the world a better place.

But, that just might be me…

Great post! So often, we, as adults, excuse the seeming innocent bullying found among smaller children as just “child's play.” It's not. As you rightfully point out, tiny bullies grow up to be big bullies.
-Jessica

Great post! We work at this often at our preschool. Children are their perfect (and imperfect selves) at 4-5 years old. They say whatever comes into their minds nice or not so nice.
We need to recognize it in our children, too.

this was a thoughtful IMPORTANT post. it's clearly *never* too soon to start thinking about how to teach our kids to be empathetic and confident at the same time.

btw, i found you through scary mommy and am so-very-glad that i did!

Oh WOW, Melissa this one is definitely will end up on my bookmark! My son will starts pre-k next month and I'm worry about these kinds of things and how he's going to handle school for the first time. Thank you for your input on this and I will go through all of the comments to absorbs as much tips as I can on how to deal with these little bullies. Thanks for this!

It's amazing to me how this issue has become so pervasive in our schools. I know bullies have been around as long as people have, but I don't ever remember bullies in preschool. In our case, my son's bully is the daughter of a very good friend of mine. She's wonderful to my son one day, and horrible to him the next, and he never knows which side of her he'll see. Thank goodness his teacher is proactive–her actions in keeping the kids separated has solved 80% of the problem.

Thanks so much for this post.

What a great post. Just this am my sons daycare teacher (hes 26mos) told me that he was pushing kids down all day and then smirking when being disciplined….he does do this at home and I'm hard on him – leaving parks etc if behaviour continues…I'm scared he's going to become 'that kid'…and don't know what to do!!

Hey you lucky duck! I just had this link emailed to be as a featured stumble upon choice!

I’m jealous. ;P