Bulllying

This is a repost of a letter I wrote to our parents last October, during National Bullying Prevention Month. 

Dear parents,

Since October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and I know that bullying is (rightly!) a concern for all of us parents, it seems to me that this is the right time for this letter to be part two of this four-part series.

The good news? We don’t have any bullies at our school! As far as I know, we never have, and I would go as far as saying that I personally don’t think three- and four-year-olds are truly capable of bullying.

Wait. I can hear you already. “But Miss Susan! What about that one kid!? My son/daughter says that…” (I had the same concerns. I remember the feelings.)

Remember the last letter? None of our children are perfect. Not yours, not mine, and not that one kid.

What we see at the preschool age, that sometimes looks like bullying, and often is concerning, is social immaturity. Social immaturity is not uncommon in preschool. Our kids come to us from all different backgrounds. Some haven’t had much socialization yet (chances to play in a group setting with peers). Some haven’t navigated their world without mom or dad by their side yet. Some of them are nervous to come to school without mom or dad. Some kids are shy. Some are loud. Kids try all kinds of ways to get what they want. Some have tantrums, some cry, some scream, some beg, some just take. Preschool is a whole new thing for your children, and sending your children to preschool is a whole new thing for you.

We understand that your children come to school with different vocabularies, different academic skills, different attention spans, different strengths and different weaknesses, different gross motor skills, and millions more differences. We work with your child, every day, on improving their vocabulary, their attention span, their gross motor skills and their fine motor skills. We expand their willingness to share 

toys and attention, their willingness to try new experiences and new friends. We also understand that they come to us with different levels of social maturity. Just as we work on all those other things, we work on social maturity.

But before I get to that, let’s talk about bullies.

A bully:

·      Creates or takes advantage of an imbalance of power (real or perceived)

·      Hurts another child, either emotionally or physically (with taunting, social exclusion, or hitting/pinching/kicking/etc.)

·      Repeats his aggressive behavior over time

·      Acts with premeditation and purpose

·      Takes pleasure in the aggressive act (enjoys being aggressive for the sake of aggression)

·      Is sneaky (knows that the behavior is wrong, so hides it)

·      Acts as a ringleader/recruits other children to join the aggressive acts

·      Gains something (social status, power) from the acts of aggression

In this list are several things we just don’t see at preschool. Even though occasionally a child will act aggressively, that doesn’t mean that he or she is a bully. Many many children will get upset and hit or kick a friend, out of frustration or anger. It is typical of children to have emotions that they don’t know how to effectively handle. And it is our job as a preschool, and your job as a parent, to help them learn how to handle their emotions. Just as it is our job to protect the rest of the children from getting hurt in the process.

One of the meanest things I see at school, and which breaks my heart, is when a child says to another, 

“I’m not your friend.” Or “You aren’t invited to my birthday party.” I would be crushed if anyone said that to me, at my age! It’s not a kind thing to say. However, when a preschooler says it to another, what he or she usually means is “I am angry that you just stepped on my toe/took my toy/got to the swing before 

me/won’t share the red marker.” The child just doesn’t have the vocabulary, or the presence of mind at the moment, to express what is truly bothering him or her. As a matter of fact, most of the time, the two children involved go on to play together not five minutes later. It isn’t truly the end of a friendship, and they aren’t considering what it would feel like if it were the end of a friendship. And the birthday party? More often than not, the child’s birthday isn’t for another 6 months, and a party certainly isn’t being planned yet, not to mention the guest list. It never was about a birthday party. It is about little kids trying

 to manage big feelings.

Let’s take an example of an interaction I observed the other day at the water table area. I had just opened the water table, and a girl came running over to play. She asked me why the lowest bin didn’t have any water in it. I replied that it just hadn’t been filled yet, and that we could work together to make sure it got water too. She loved that idea, and we began scooping buckets of water from the top section, and pouring 

it into the bottom bin. After a little while, another group of kids came running into the water table area, and quickly grabbed buckets, sailboats, sharks, etc. They began playing with their toys in various ways. The first girl shouted out “NO! YOU ARE RUINING IT! WE ARE PUTTING THE WATER INTO THE BOTTOM AREA!” A couple girls got nervous and turned to leave the area. A couple more ignored her, and one splashed her with water. Before anyone walked away, I asked the first girl not to shout, but rather to tell her friends what she was working on, and ask them if they wanted to help. She did, and they all got to work helping fill the bottom level. (They had a choice to say no, and I would then have been then tasked with explaining that the area is open to everyone and that they can play with the toys differently as long as they didn’t purposely undo her work).

Now, if you hadn’t seen the entire interaction, you might think that the first girl was a bully, for shouting at other kids who were just trying to play with toys in an appropriate way. Or you might think that the last girl was a bully, for deliberately splashing someone else with water.

However, if we look back at the description of a bully, we will see that it doesn’t fit this situation. Both girls acted immaturely, and both acted out of emotion. The first child, feeling frustrated at the perceived notion that her “work” would be thwarted, shouted in such a way that she made others feel uncomfortable, and that wasn’t effective. The last child was also reacting, to the fact that she was angry or scared at being shouted at, when she was just trying to play.  Neither girl premeditated that interaction, neither was enjoying the moment, neither tried to hide their actions from me, the teacher, and neither tried to get others to join them in their actions.

So who do we address in this situation? Everyone. The first girl needs to learn that shouting is rude, scary, and doesn’t work. The girls who turned to walk away need to know that they don’t have to leave their play because another child wants them to. The girls who ignored her need to learn to hear and acknowledge others’ feelings. And the final girl needs to learn that lashing out is not a solution, and doesn’t resolve the situation.

All of these children have a lot to learn about how to handle their emotions and effectively interact with others. So do your children. And so do mine. To be honest, I do too, and I bet you too.

This is a typical situation at our school. It might be a squabble over who gets to ride a particular tricycle, who gets to be first in line, or who had a toy first. And the solution was typical as well. Teaching the children, and having them try out a calmer, more reasonable reaction to a situation, is generally enough. These types of things occur often, and the children start to gain control of their reactions on their own. Our goal, as it is in everything we do, is to teach the children. We know that all our kids need to learn different things, and we work with all of them, as much as they need us to. It took my son months to remember the difference between “b” and “d”. And it took my daughter a long long time before she could say “spaghetti.” When emotions are running high, it may take even longer to learn a new concept (talking instead of shouting, taking a deep breath instead of hitting). We understand that, and we will repeat the lessons as long as we need to.

However, sometimes it doesn’t end there. Sometimes a child goes home, and fairly enough, reports “So-and-so was mean to me. She yelled at me/hit me/said I’m not her friend/threw sand in my hair.”

It’s crushing, isn’t it? We parents want our kids to have an amazing day and have fun and be happy and 

feel loved. It’s hard enough letting them go to school without us. At pick-up time, we ask them what they did, and they can’t remember that they painted or that their teacher read the funny book about the bear, or that they sang their favorite song at circle time, or that they got to be the line leader on the way to music class. So when they do remember that someone was mean, it devastates us. Our job as parents is to protect them! Just as we want the teachers to see how amazing they are, we want their peers to see it too. We want them to have fun and play together and have good friends!

As a school, we understand that, of course! We do love your kids. And the truth is, they love each other, even when they are overcome by another feeling. Please know that we don’t let any moment, like the one described, go without intervention. We see every interaction between the children as a chance for 

everyone to learn and develop. As much as we are teaching one child not to hit, we are teaching the other how to stand up for themselves.  We also remind the children about the fun things they like to do together, the basis for their friendship. It is equally important for us to reset the tone and send them back to playing on a happy note, with a foundation for making their friendship stronger. That is what will allow them to have more positive interactions, and fewer negative ones.

Please teach your child to deal with these situations in a constructive way. They should try talking to each other. (We constantly teach the children to say “No thank you!” in a strong voice if they don’t like how someone is treating them). If that isn’t working, they should ask a teacher for help. Help them remember what they like about their friends, and give them the words to help them initiate positive play experiences.

Please don’t, though, let your own emotions run away with you. It is hard to hear that your child had a negative incident at school, and I know you want to know who that kid is, what happened, how he/she was dealt with, and you want to protect your child from any future incidents. We know. We understand. Just remember that your child is going to experience other children forever. Some will be an amazing influence on your child. Their friends will expose them to new places, new foods, new ideas, new music, other new people. Sometimes they will encounter kids who are a negative influence. It is going to happen. Make 

more out of the positives, and less out of the negatives. You will be making your child feel better about today, and you will be setting him or her up to feel better and be stronger every day of their lives.

But. But you can’t protect your child from any future incidents. Any more that you can make sure no one will ever make you feel bad again. Imagine if your child hurt another child, and that child’s parent told him, “Don’t play with him anymore!” Those parents are teaching that child to avoid problems, rather than to learn to solve problems. The child learns to hide from someone who upset them, rather than become stronger. And your child suffers. When a child returns after a bad day, and says to another child “I’m not playing with you! You’re mean!”, even if it is to someone who has been mean, she or he is acting aggressively (and acting aggressively with a parent’s permission). When a child does it because he or she wants to get revenge against a child who has scared or hurt them in the past, that child is enjoying the feeling of being aggressive. And when someone gets friends to join in on saying “We don’t want to play with you, let’s go somewhere else,” that child is becoming a ringleader, and gaining social status through aggression.

Does any of that sound familiar? To me, it sounds like a bully. And while I still stand by my statement 

that we don’t have children here at preschool who knowingly act as bullies, we are in danger of training them to become bullies. It won’t be long before they are able to see the connection between their actions, the way their own actions make them feel empowered, and the way their actions make the other children feel powerless.

Our world can be a beautiful place, when we make sure that we do our part to contribute to it. We see so much negativity in the news, and we worry. We worry about our kids, their future, our security, ourselves. Let’s work together to make our world better, starting now. When we make our own children stronger and more capable, they can become the good influence for their peers. And that? That will insure that we are 

all increasingly surrounded by positive, strong, thoughtful people.

Miss Susan