Bullying before kindergarten.
Most adults assume bullying starts at school. The research says otherwise, and it also says something more useful: at this age the roles are not yet fixed.
It starts earlier than people think.
One study of children's experience with violence found that 20.4 percent of children ages two to five had experienced physical bullying in their lifetime, and 14.6 percent had been teased.1
Involvement at this age may actually be higher than in older children. A study of four year olds found 25 percent acting as bullies, 22 percent as victims, and 2 percent as both, meaning roughly half were involved in some role. Among school age children the comparable figures are 7 to 15 percent as bullies and about 10 percent as victims.1
A cross-national study of children ages four to six reported victim rates between 15.2 and 32.4 percent and perpetrator rates between 15.2 and 25 percent.2
Photo placeholderWhat it looks like at this age.
Not what it looks like at 12, which is part of why adults miss it.
Mostly physical
Hitting, pushing, pinching, and taking things. Physical aggression tends to peak around age four, then declines as language and self-regulation develop.3
Exclusion
You cannot play with us. Deliberate, repeated, and aimed at the same child. This is social bullying in its earliest form.
Watched, rarely stopped
Other children were present in about two thirds of observed incidents, and very few stepped in to help.4
Missed by adults
Early childhood educators tend to underestimate how often aggression happens in their own classrooms.2
Photo placeholderThe part that should give you hope.
Here is the finding that matters most, and the one almost nobody talks about. The roles children take at this age are less stable than they are among older children.1
A four year old who pushes is not a bully in the way a 13 year old might be. The behavior has not hardened into an identity, the group has not organized itself around it, and the child has not yet been labeled by adults in a way that follows them. Intervention at three does something that intervention at 13 cannot.
This is the entire reason the Coloring Book Campaign exists. It is cheaper, kinder, and more effective to teach the habit than to break one.
What happens when it is handled badly.
Exclusion, and at a scale most people would not believe.
Preschoolers get expelled more than teenagers do.
Yale's Child Study Center found that children under five are expelled from state-funded preschool at about three times the rate of K through 12 students, and that private and community child care programs expel at more than 13 times the K through 12 rate.5
Analysis of the National Survey of Children's Health put it at roughly 250 children suspended or expelled from preschool every day. That analysis also found Black children were 2.2 times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other children, and that while boys are 51 percent of the preschool population they receive 82 percent of the suspensions and expulsions.6
Research on why points less at the children than at the settings. Rates track with program factors like group size and staff-to-child ratio, and with the support available to teachers.7
Photo placeholderWhat to do instead.
One
Name the behavior, not the child.
That grabbing hurt Maya, rather than you are being mean. At three, a label sticks to the child and starts shaping how every adult in the room sees them.
Two
Watch for the pattern.
One push is development. The same child targeting the same child across a week is something else. Write down what you see, because memory turns a pattern back into a series of incidents.
Three
Teach the words.
Much early aggression is a child with a want and no vocabulary. Giving them the sentence, I want a turn, removes the reason for the grab.
Four
Coach the watchers.
Most children present do nothing, because nobody told them what doing something looks like. Teaching one line, come play with me, gives a bystander a usable move.
Five
Look at the room.
Since rates track with group size, ratios, and staff support, the question is not only what is wrong with this child. It is what in this room is making it likely.
Six
Do not remove the child.
Expulsion at this age takes away the setting where the skill would have been learned, and the research is clear that it is not the fix.
Photo placeholderWhy we work through coloring books.
A two year old cannot sit through a lesson on kindness, and a childcare center does not have a spare hour in the day. What it does have is a coloring activity already on the schedule.
The Coloring Book Campaign puts the lesson inside that. Each page is a scene a child colors and an adult can talk about, which is how a three year old learns anything.
For staff, Facility Training covers recognizing the pattern and responding without labeling. Given what the research says about program factors driving expulsion, training the adults does more than any single child-facing change.
Sources.
1. National Association for the Education of Young Children, Bullying in Early Childhood, summarizing research on children ages two to five and a study of four year olds.
2. Monks et al., cross-national study of children ages four to six, and related research on educator awareness of classroom aggression.
3. Research on early childhood aggression showing physical aggression peaking near age four and declining as language and self-regulation develop.
4. Monks et al., 2021, observational study finding bystanders present in approximately two thirds of peer victimization incidents.
5. Gilliam, W.S., Yale University Child Study Center, Prekindergarteners Left Behind, and subsequent work on child care expulsion rates.
6. Center for American Progress analysis of the National Survey of Children's Health, on daily preschool suspensions and expulsions and demographic disparities.
7. Research on preschool suspension and expulsion finding rates associated with program characteristics including group size, staff-to-child ratio, and teacher support.