Samantha Schultz

November 6, 2014

Human Development: Early Childhood 124; 900C-901C

Bullying in Early Childhood

The National Association for the Education of Young Children

Section 1

I decided to follow The National Association for the Education of Young Children. Their

mission statement is to help young children with basic needs. On Facebook October 28, 2014

they posted, “As Bullying Prevention Awareness Month comes to a close, read about bullying in

early childhood.” October is known for anti-bullying.

Bullying in childhood is a major problem that is known across the world. Not only does it

happen among the older children, younger kids are also bullied. Bullying may be wide spread but

more children are starting to understand what it is. There have become more resources for kids to

go to if they have experienced any symptoms.

What is bullying exactly? Snow defines bullying in three parts; all which is intended to

hurt another child, “committed by a child to gain…power over another child” (NAEYC).

Bullying can also be in different forms such as physical, verbal (name calling), aggressive or

even social. Snow explains bully as the dominant one, victim as the target and bully-victim apart

of both roles.

According to a study that was done, 20.4% of children 2-5 experience physical bullying

and 14.6% have experienced being teased (NAEYC). It looks like younger kids are bullied more

rather than older kids. “A child who is a bully today, may be a bully-victim or victim later in the

year”

It can take place in a variety of ways. Social media, among gender differences, and social

networks (friends). Bullies tend to think it will give them more popularity with their own group.

There are resources and places that people can fight against bullying. It takes courage to

stand up but they must know that they aren’t alone. The society wants the children to know that

they can be saved.

My main goal is to help people. I can relate this specific subject in a lot of different ways

within any occupation that I choose. By going into social worker occupation, I can raise the

awareness for bullying so children know that they can speak up and they don’t have to be afraid.

Social work does many different areas of interest. There is a program called NASW; National

Association of Social Workers. They go around and raise awareness at different schools. They

speak out against harassment and individual behaviors. In the future, I may not go directly into

this but having that idea of helping and knowing I can make a difference is what I am going for.

“NASW policy calls upon social workers across fields of practice to speak out against

harassment and bullying; to educate colleagues, students, and institutions about the negative

impact of harassing behaviors on the individual and the environment” (NASW). They believe

that all children and adults should be able to learn or work in an environment that doesn’t

involve any type of harassment.

Section 2:

Introduction:

Sometimes bullying only lasts through the child’s years but too often can lead to being

and adult which will cause more aggressive behavior later in their years. I have already discussed

what bullying is, however in this article, “Victims, Bullies, and Bystanders” it explains that it can

be as far as stealing lunch money, receiving repetitive threats, or being shoved on the

playground. Who is there to help? Most teachers find that they feel helpless in these instances so

they aren’t able to do anything about the situation which leads the child to suffer more. As a

result, teachers need more experience on how to handle situations such as these so they are able

to help the children that are in need.

Who are the bullies and who are the victims? In the article, “Victims, Bullies, and

Bystanders” it describes bullies as low self-esteem children. It is also believed that most bullies

are boys. We do see girls being the dominant person, but it is most common in boys. There are

many different places that we may see a bully emerge themselves. It’s said it could be passed

from generation to generation, which may have being poor in common. If a family is poor, that

bully sees himself as trying to be strong. Some come from families that don’t share their

emotions which leads them with the feeling of being unloved. So, who are the victims? Usually

the social networks begin in elementary school. Popularity is decided; if you’re not popular that

is a weakness and can turn into being a victim. Low self-esteem may also be a factor. A bully is

going to pick a child that is younger than them and that they know won’t stick up for themselves.

The one group I haven’t mentioned are the bystanders. In the article, “Victims, bullies, and

bystanders” they are classified as the people that look. They are considered the audience in the

group. They don’t take any action to make the bully stop what they are doing. Teachers could

also be classified in this selection if they are not intervening when they know something is

wrong.

Participants:

Within the article, “Victims, Bullies, and Bystanders” they didn’t really use any children

in their study. Instead, they choose 25 picture books that showed bullying among young children.

They asked three main questions to identify within these books; 1) How are bullies and bullying

behavior portrayed in K–3 children’s literature published from 1995 to 2003? 2) To what extent

do the bullying scenarios depicted in the children’s trade books reflect what experts in the

literature say about bullying in the real world? (3) How can teachers use these books to address

bullying in their classrooms? (Entenman, Murnen & Hendricks, 2005).

What the study found:

The article found categories that emerged; bullying behavior, character portrayal, the

gender, and the setting. The two main settings were at school and home. Within these settings

there are a variety of places as mentioned in the previous sections. Within the 25 books that were

choose, 60% were male and 20% were female. The percentages for victims came close; 48%

being male victims and 44% female victims (Entenman et al., 2005). “The content of this

analysis results show that the most frequent type of bullying was verbal intimidation, including

teasing, and name-calling” (Entenman et al., 2005).

Implications/Conclusion:

A major implication of the article is how bullies are defined. We found out that it can be

a gender difference among other reasons. We were able to look at the factors of why bullying

starts off at such a young age.

In conclusion to the article, we need to find more ways to stop this wide spread issue. We

see bullying and victims in children’s books-stories that we read our 5 year old children. Is this

really what we want them to hear?

Section 3

Introduction:

The second article, ““Aggressors, Victims, and Defenders in Preschool: Peer, Self-, and

Teacher Reports” starts off by explaining how preschoolers can lead to aggressive behavior as

they get into more classes in school. We see it more in ages 8 and above which puts them around

second to third grade.

Participants:

The participants included in this study were from ages 4 to 5 years. The second two grade

class aged from 5 to 6 years in four London schools (Monks et al., 2003). The parents/guardians

were sent a letter and if they did not want their child to be involved in this study, they were to

send a letter back requesting it. Only one parent did not want their child used in this study

(Monks et al., 2003). Teachers were also involved in the study.

What the study found:

“The largest number of aggressor nominations was received for social exclusion (31.7%)

and physical (28.0%), followed by verbal (22.4%) and rumor spreading (17.9%) (Monks et al.,

2003). According to table 1 the study found aggressors as number one, followed by victim and

then by defender. The children also had to do a self-nominator. Most of them nominated

themselves as defender and victim. Teachers nominated about 10% as both aggressor and victim.

Implications/Conclusions:

As mentioned in my other article, teachers may not realize that a child is being bullied or

attacked in some way. Teachers play a huge role in watching many children so this could affect

their judgments on children that do need the attention.

In conclusion to the article, aggressive children may victimize many different peers

before they find someone to victimize as a target (Monks et al, 2003). This theory is suggested

because aggression keeps changing making it easier for them to find more friends that have been

victims and why in the study, many have experienced the victim role themselves. It could also

explain why many teachers only notice a few victims (Monks et al, 2003).

Section 4:

I always see ads for anti-bullying being advertised. In my career I want to help people.

That may include younger children, to older men and women. I stand against bullying and I want

children to know they don’t have to be afraid to speak up. This can mean everyone and to make

sure they get the help that is needed for them.

Bullying is known worldwide as a problem with short term and long term effects on

children. Entering kindergarten can be crucial to young children because it’s when social groups

are starting to form.

In article one, the Facebook post connects to that more because of the bystander effect I

think. It explains the different roles that we see in both articles, but the first one talks about how

we can try to help reduce bullying among younger children.

The second article, “Aggressors, victims, and defenders in preschool: peer, self-, and

teacher reports” addresses the ideas how bullying is among younger age involving a lot of the

preschoolers. The Facebook post relating to the article by Snow, shows how bullying involves

more of the bully-victim effect. They may start off in the preschool years but as the children

tend to grow older, more roles may start to take effect as we seen in the article by Monk et al.

(2003).

Advantages of getting information from a research article:

Using scholarly articles provide actual facts and studies that have been done.

Many of the authors within the article are experienced with that type of research being

done. We are usually able to find many more articles similar that could be written by

same author.

Disadvantages of getting information from a research article:

The main issue I had with using scholarly articles are finding the information within that

article. For example, I really had to dig deep into an article in order to understand what it

was talking about.

I found that if I wanted an article and was not registered on the site that it was found on I

would have to pay for a copy of it. The huge disadvantage would be if I wasn’t a student

with the access, it is hard for a person to read the whole PDF file.

Advantages of getting information from a social media site:

Much easier to read and understand. Also gets straight to the point, usually not a lot of

reading.

Easier to access

Disadvantages of getting information from a social media site:

Most of the social media sites are opinion based and not real facts. We sometimes have to

guess whether or not the media sites and internet are true.

May not find all the information that is required due to the lack of reading as listed under

the advantages. When writing a long essay, scholarly journals tend to come in handier for

more information.

The NAEYC post on Facebook connects to our book in many different ways. As we read

about in our text book and as the first article points out are the gender differences. According

to Berk, boys are usually more prone to these situations than girls are (Berk, p. 502). They

tend to act out more and their behavior is more aggressive. Within the first article we found

out that 60% were male and 20% were female in the children’s books.

We can look at victims as neglected children. They engage in low interaction and are

poorly skilled (Berk, p. 501). “Victims, bullies and bystanders” relates to neglected children

because it explains ways to help this children. Bullies target neglected kids mainly because of

low self-esteem and they are easy to pick on. According to Berk, there are a few key

concepts to help these rejected children. Children can use coaching, positive social skills and

learn how to interact more with another child (Berk, p. 502).

References

Berk, L.E. (2012). Infants, Children, and Adolescents (7th edition). Dallas, Texas: Pearson

Entenman, J., Murnen, T.J., Hendricks, C. (2005). Victims, bullies and bystanders in K-3

literature. The Reading Teacher, 59(4), 352-364. doi: 10.1598/RT.59.45

Monks, C.P., Smith, P.L., & Swettenham, J. (2003). Aggressors, victims, and defenders in

preschool: peer, self-, and teacher reports. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49(4), 453-69.

NASW calls upon social workers to speak out against bullying. (2014, January 1). Retrieved

November 19, 2014, from

https://www.socialworkers.org/diversity/new/2010/lgbtqbullying.asp

Snow, K. (2014, October 27). Bullying in Early Childhood. Retrieved November 19, 2014, from

http://www.naeyc.org/blogs/bullying-early-childhood