One of my worst fears going into my parenting journey was having to deal with bullying once we get to that stage in our kid’s life. I’ve spent countless hours thinking and reading about bullying and how I would handle a situation in which my daughter was bullied, or if she was the one doing the bullying. Having grown up as a bullied kid myself (short, overweight, bookish, awkward, especially after moving to the US from another country  – all the classic stereotypes for a bullied kid, I had them), and having once taken a foray into being a bully while trying to misguidedly fit in with some more popular kids, this is a topic that’s always been pressing on me. I had no doubt that my daughter would face this issue, on either side of the bullying divide or possibly both. I didn’t think, however, that I would have to start dealing with this in preschool.

My kiddo (let’s call her C) recently turned four, and she’s been in a wonderful daycare/pre-K program for the past 2 years. She’s generally a pretty calm kid, and the picture of adaptability – she’ll be social when she wants, a loner at other times, friendly and chatty, and tends to take on whatever other kids are doing or want to do with her, rather than leading the way.

A few months ago, she became close friends with a new girl in her class (let’s call her D), and while I’m deeply reluctant to call the girl a bully at such a young age, some of the behavior we’ve witnessed in their interactions (some at school, as well as during a few play dates outside school) have given us pause and concern. The girl is physically forceful with C – trying to pull her away from whatever my daughter might be doing to another activity, covering her face or mouth when she’s talking, and a few times, our daughter was covered in dirt after playtime, which she attributed to being pushed by this girl. Usually, my daughter will describe these interactions, namely the pushing, as playful, ie, “D pushed me down because she wanted me to be part of the soup she was making in the dirt.” When I ask her if she liked being pushed like that, C tends to just shrug it off. At a play date recently, D closed a door to the room C was in, and held it closed, refusing to let C out (which scared C to the point of tears.) A few times, I’ve seen or heard D say something negative like, “What’s that smell? Oh, that’s just C.”

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The girls are the same age, and because they’re both so young, there are developmental limits to what they are willing to share and are able to understand at this point. I’m hesitant to call my daughter’s friend a bully because she is just 4 and there is little if any malice in her behavior. We’ve also seen that D’s parents are very responsive to any acts that are aggressive, and take those opportunities to talk to her about C’s feelings, how D would feel if she were on the receiving end, etc. As much as it sometimes hurts my heart to see these interactions happen and see my kid slighted, I’ve been working on using them as learning opportunities for my child and for myself/our family in a few different ways:

1) Moderate the grown-up reaction. My husband has had a few papa bear moments when witnessing some of these interactions, and we’re trying to be proactive in remembering that these are still very young kids, the meanness is not malice most of the time, and we have responsibility as adults to let kids work things out themselves, and teach our daughter how to respond and understand her own feelings in these interactions.

2) Focus on everyone’s feelings and motivations. After each incident, we’ve been intentional about talking to our daughter about her feelings, and also her friend’s. We’ve asked her what she thinks D might be thinking when she’s behaving a certain way, to avoid demonizing what is sometimes truly playful, unintentionally aggressive behavior. We’ve also asked her how something made her feel, and what she thinks she should do in each situation based on those feelings.

3) Empower. Girls are often taught to be demure and more passive, even in the face of aggressive behavior toward them. Even I, despite being taught by my military officer grandfather to hit back when hit, tend to be a very passive person. But I want my daughter to know that while it’s better not to hit back physically, she should be empowered to “hit back” verbally. We talk to C about using her words to tell D how she feels when she’s being pushed or dragged away, or when her feelings are hurt. We tell her to say no, and that she doesn’t have to acquiesce to someone else’s plans. Since this tends to be C’s nature anyway, even when there is no aggression toward her, we hope it’ll give her some more comfort to push back when she’d rather do things her way.

4) Be an advocate. Not only are we trying to teach C to advocate for herself in situations that she doesn’t like, we’re making sure we advocate for her as well. Recently, we were picking C up from school and D made a joke about C in front of us. Her parents weren’t there yet, nor were the teachers in earshot, so I made sure to ask D whether she thinks that’s a nice thing to say to someone, and asked her how she would feel if someone said that to her. I wanted to make sure that my daughter heard me so that she could model me, and hear me stand up for her.

5) Stay vigilant. At this point, I don’t see a lot of reason to truly worry about D’s behavior toward C – I truly believe that it’s coming from a place of playfulness and that her parents are proactive enough to address negative interactions and their implications – but I am definitely paying close attention when the girls are together and am regularly checking in with their teachers for anything they might be seeing. Fingers crossed (though I’m a realist through and through) that this will be the worst of bullying we’ll have to deal with in C’s growing years.