Listening Early Goes A Long Way

Three girls take part in a common kindergarten classroom interaction—planning what they’ll play during morning recess. Recess is a time when children participate in unrestricted free play with their peers. The games to be played–and the players—are constantly on the minds of the 5- and 6-year-olds, especially during cleanup. One of the girls in the group offers the following suggestion, “How about only people wearing skirts are cats?”

It’s impossible to know what made the child say this. But some might view it as a malicious act of early aggression from a bully-in-training. We don’t often think of a kindergarten classroom as a place to expect bullying. But a New York Times article from last year, “The Playground Gets Even Tougher [2],” generated quite a buzz among parents and early educators. The article detailed almost vicious acts of aggression by children against other children because of physical and socioeconomic differences. The evidence that does exist, the article reports, suggests that this set of negative behaviors starts at home and is encouraged by the media-driven culture at large.

The girl who made the “cats” comment might have been bullying. Or she might have been looking for a strategy to initiate rule-based play. She could just as easily have identified shirt color or the presence of barrettes in that small group.

Either way, this was an opportunity to broach the subject of bullying with the entire class. One of our team teachers leading the discussion asked, without naming names, if this was a fair way of deciding who can play which game. Most of the children knew that it wasn’t, and they said so. The teacher then continued, explaining that it’s not fair to exclude other children based on articles of clothing–or crucially––other physical characteristics. It’s akin to excluding on the basis of gender, race, skin color or hair type—and these are types of exclusion many kindergartners know are inherently unjust.

That moment became the lesson for the day. Children have to grow up in environments in which they can make mistakes. Parents, teachers and caregivers have to help them work through and rectify those mistakes. The seeds of bullying are sown early, be they the seeds of active aggression or passive compliance. Conflicts, of course, will still always happen; they’re bound to. Children will be excluded and feelings will get hurt. And this is especially true in a classroom in which children are active and moving about, interacting with each other and playing out the world around them.

What our children need are caring adults watching over them—in the classroom, on the playground, on the streets, at home—to help them understand this unjust world we live in and help them pave the way to a more just one. For our part, we need to make sure we teach children to verbalize their feelings. They must learn to say, “That’s not fair!” and come to an adult if their peers are unwilling to listen. But first, we ourselves must listen.

Palenski is a kindergarten teacher in Connecticut.