Creating a Bully-Free Preschool

With the ever changing ages, faces, and personalities that walk into a typical child care environment, we at Phoenix Child Care & Academy understand why some people believe that bullying can start surprisingly early, even involving children as young as 3 and 4 years of age!  Recently we experienced a common scenario between a group of young girls that teamed up on another child to cause hurt feelings and tears.  To elaborate, this particular young girl, accidentally woke up a sleeping child at nap time and was made fun of by a group of others to the point where she left the room and wanted to sit alone.  This incident inspired our staff to make efforts towards creating a "Bully-Free" child care center. We knew this effort had to be a combination of not only staff, but children and parents alike.  Our goal was to educate everyone at our center on what actions are considered to be bullying, what a person should do if they feel as if they are being bullied, and how we can prevent acts of bullying in the future.  

To educate staff, parents, and children, we identified specific behaviors that can potentially result in bullying and created a poster illustrating examples.  Our poster included quotes from children (i.e. "you can't play with us", "your hair is messy"), pictures and drawings, magazine cut outs, etc.  We wanted to first make sure that all were aware of what exactly bully is and how it is commonly displayed in a child care setting.

Next, we created and practiced typical bullying scenarios through role plays.  The objective was to teach children how to identify and react when they or someone around them are being bullied.  Some examples of topics we used were name-calling, laughing and sneering at others, and teasing.  It was amazing to see how involved the children became even at their young age!  Not only did they become more knowledgeable on dealing with a bullying situation, they embraced the idea of "looking out for and protecting their peers" from being bullied.  

Finally, to promote prevention, we consistently keep bullying awareness a major topic of discussion in lesson plans and daily operations.  To keep staff and students alike keen to eliminating any actions that may lead to bullying, we implement a variety of related activities.  For example, during free play, staff are admonished to discourage "grouping-up" or  "cliques", and encourage fair play and creating healthy friendships through a number of activities involving team work and positive interdependence.  

Although many more efforts need to be made to better equip our children to identify, deal with, and prevent situations involving bullying, we at Phoenix Child Care & Academy take this matter very seriously and will continue to make every effort towards making sure each and every child at our Center feels safe, secure, and prepared to be productive citizens of society.

Lisa Hunt

I am the owner of Phoenix Child Care & Academy.  My husband, Karl, and I are now in our 3rd year of operations focused on providing opportunities for successful early childhood education and development  I am a proud mother of 4 and a Spanish teacher of 10 years.  Along with my passion for children, experiences within my career shed light on the need for a positive beginning for all children.   My hope and dream is that through our daily efforts our child care facility will offer a foundation for all children to build a Great Start on life leading well into their futures!