Addressing Childhood Bullying

This article deals with ways to address and prevent preschool bullying. Including strategies for collaboration between children, educators and families to avoid bullying in early childhood settings. The authors state that many factors affect a preschooler’s tendency to bully including inappropiate television shows and input from older siblings. Because preschool is often a child’s first social experience, the authors stress that adult intervention to idenitfy and resolve these bullying behaviors is essential.

The article mentions three types of preschool aggression. The first type is “Physical Aggression” this type stems from a child’s first experience with sharing, sharing which sometimes results in physical behaviors, like hitting, pushing, biting, etc. The goal is being dominant in the group. Since I grew up being the only child I was not used to sharing any of my things with others. Since I grew up being the only child in my family I was not used to sharing any of my things with others. I remember my first preschool experience as being very difficult, stressful and overwhelming for the first couple of months. I now work as a toddler teacher about half of my students are only children. Seeing how they interact with the other students it reminds me of how I would act, not wanting to share, crying and sometimes getting physical with another child who wanted to play with me. The second type of aggression “instrumental” which involves the preschool child’s inability to put themselves in the other child’s place and the lack of vocabulary to express their feelings. This can also lead to a power imbalance as in physical aggression. The third type is “relational” aggression which exhibited by excluding others from a social group. Example of this are things like not including a peer in a birthday party or not including them in a group activity. I see this aggression more in our preschool room, especially among the girls. I hear constantly on the playground “they...