Are Young Children Capable of Bullying? Early Childhood Educators’ and Parents’ Perceptions of Bullying

• In Event: 2-200 - Bullying During Early Childhood: Multiple Methods and Informants in Three Ethnically and Culturally Diverse Populations

Integrative Statement

Although bullying among school-age children has become a pervasive international concern, relatively few studies have examined bullying behaviours in preschool-age children (3- to 5-years old). Bullying is typically defined as intentional ‘harm doing,’ carried out repeatedly over time and is characterised by an imbalance of power (Olweus, 1993). There has been controversy around applying this definition to early childhood because of the challenges in discriminating between normative patterns of aggression and intentional non-normative aggressive behaviours (Hanish et al., 2004). This study examined early childhood educators’ and parents’ perceptions of preschool-age children’s bullying capability and the types of behaviours they believed constituted bullying during this developmental period.

Participants were 93 ECEs (Mage = 42.6 years; SD = 10.9) and 75 parents (Mage = 34.9 years; SD = 6.42) of children between the ages of three and five years living in New Zealand. Caregiver’s responded to open-ended questions about their perceptions of bullying and their qualitative responses were analysed using content analysis and by categorising the data according to frequency and major themes.

The majority of ECEs (76%) and parents (72%) indicated that young children are capable of bullying. A key theme emerging from caregivers’ responses was the importance of children’s intentionality when judging behaviour as bullying. More specifically, although young children are perceived as capable of bullying there was uncertainty about whether these behaviours were used with malicious intent or whether children were modelling behaviours they had seen in their environment. Caregivers also indicated that bullying behaviours differed for younger and older children with older children more likely to be labelled as bullies. Older, more experienced ECEs were more likely to indicate that young children are not capable of engaging in bullying during the early years.

ECEs and parents indicated that the most common examples of bullying behaviour used during early childhood were physical aggression, followed by relational and verbal aggression (see Figure 1). Over half of ECEs and parents provided examples of bullying behaviour that included more than one form of aggression. A small percentage of ECEs (14%) and parents (5%) indicated that reactive aggression was less serious and more normative behaviour during the early years whereas proactive, premeditated behaviour was considered more serious and was more likely to be labelled as bullying.

Findings suggest that the majority of caregivers believe that preschool-age children are capable of bullying and these behaviours are primarily in the form of physical, relational, and verbal aggression. Of particular interest was the finding that bullying behaviours were viewed differently depending on the age of the child, leading to a reluctance to label behaviours as ‘bullying’ in younger children. ECEs and parents highlighted the importance of intentionality when assessing young children’s bullying-like behaviours, however, fewer references to power imbalance and repetition were noted. This is inconsistent with traditional definitions of bullying as they are presented in the literature. These findings highlight the need to guide caregivers towards a common understanding of bullying as it is used by preschool-age children.

Author

• Cara Swit, University of Canterbury
  Presenting Author