Your Child Is Bullying Others At Daycare: What Is Going On?

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Bullying is a hard problem to face when your child is in daycare, but hearing that your child is the bully can also be an emotionally exasperating situation. Understanding how these behaviors begin and how you can stop them can help make their daycare experience more effective.

Avoid Explaining It Away

When you hear that your child is behaving in an aggressive way towards children at daycare, your first reaction is likely to be one of disbelief. After all, no parent wants to hear that their child is showing bullying behaviors. You are likely going to try to explain away their behaviors by saying that your child is being picked on, just playing, or that fighting is natural behavior between children.

Unfortunately, this kind of justification is only giving your child the "okay" for their bullying. As a result, they're likely going to continue. Instead of justifying their behavior, accept it and nip it in the bud. Stopping bullying behaviors while your child is in daycare can help teach them important life skills, such as empathy, sharing, and proper interpersonal behavior.

Understand Why Your Child Is Bullying

Children aren't born bullies, so you need to understand why your child is behaving like this at their daycare center. Even if your child behaves like an angel at home or doesn't bully family members, they could still be bullying. Children who turn to bullying often:

• Struggle with low-self esteem,
• Need to control every situation,
• Suffer from extreme anger or lack of empathy, and
• Experience forms of bullying at home (from siblings, family members, etc.).

Once you've identified these influences, you can work to fix the emotional damage they have caused in your child's life. Dealing with them in a quick manner can help beat your child's bullying behaviors.

Deal With The Bullying Right Away

When your child shows bullying behaviors in daycare, you're in a difficult and rewarding situation. It is difficult because bullying usually indicates a child has emotional problems; however, you're in a rewarding situation because you can stop your child from becoming a bully later in life by dealing with it while in they are in daycare.

To do that, you need to assess the causes of their bullying (which you did above) and manage those problems in the following ways:

• Boost their self-esteem – Praise your children for their success, display their art on the fridge, reward them for good behavior, and make them feel loved.
• Managing control issues – Give your child control over certain situations (such as choosing one dinner a week) if they feel a lack of control or more carefully structure their lives if they are too controlling.
• Teach them anger coping methods – Set a good example for anger control with your own behaviors and emphasize emotional empathy when children get excessively angry at friends or family members.
• Break the bullying cycle at home – Whether your child is being bullied by a sibling or feels bullied by you or their other parent, you need to break the cycle of bullying immediately.

While daycares in your area will stop your child from bullying and try to alleviate the emotional pain of everyone involved, it can still be emotionally devastating. At such an early age, children really need a lot of support, and bullying can cause lifelong self-esteem problems. Just imagine the way your child would react if they were the one being bullied to get a feel for why you have to deal with this problem immediately.

24 May 2016