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Hogwartz School of Witchcraft wasn’t all smooth broom-riding for Harry Potter. His Quidditch stick was broken by bullies. Even his owl, Hedwig, was tormented. Anne of Green Gables was teasingly referred to as ‘Carrots’, Roald Dahl’s Matilda was taunted as a ‘bookworm’. And five-year-old Sean, who started kindergarten in Moree last year, was teased on the school bus, jostled in the corridors and dreaded the approach of recess and lunch.
According to a new study, Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, and all of the other bullies who haunt the schoolyards of the world, have one thing in common. They hit their aggressive peak between 24 and 42 months. And unlike most of us, they haven’t learnt to interact and achieve goals without aggression.
The study on the development of physical aggression in infancy by Dr Richard Tremblay, a researcher at the University of Montréal, has been published in the Infant Mental Health Journal. The study shows that aggression starts in the first year of birth. ‘This suggests that rather than learning to physically aggress, children are learning not to physically aggress,’ Dr Tremblay said. ‘The results we have been getting over the past few years tell an intriguing, albeit, not unanticipated story about human nature. Physical aggression appears during the first year after birth. Its frequency increases rapidly during the second year after birth, reaches a peak between 24 and 42 months after birth, and then decreases steadily.’
Judy Radich, Director of Cooloon Childcare Centre and President of Early Childhood Australia, says the results of the study have implications for children’s services, early childhood educators and parents. As she sees it, with child care centres more in demand than ever before, the question is whether child care staff will have the time to take the implications of the new study into account. ‘We have been putting more kids into child care over the last 10 years and we haven’t yet seen what kind of adults these kids have turned into—there have been no studies,’ she says.
Radich sees the ‘appalling’ staff/child ratios—with one staff member caring for five babies in some centres—as exacerbating aggressive behavior. ‘We get a lot of calls from people saying that they have an 18-month-old child and they want their kids to socialise so they send them to child care. I think this is detrimental if the child care centre is not a good one.’
In the fantasy world, the Hogwartz School of Witchcraft ratio is a good one. Wizard/student ratios are literally out of this world and as a result, Harry graduates unscarred (apart from a small lightening bolt on his forehead). But what would have become of Harry without the kindly Professor Dumbledore or Matilda without a caring Miss Honey?
Dr Robin Harvey, a psychologist at the Child Study Centre at the University of Western Australia, is adamant that with early intervention from skilled and dedicated professionals, children can learn how to negotiate their world without aggression. Dr Harvey uses the centre’s facilities—which include three kindergartens—to study early intervention with children experiencing behavioural and emotional problems. She sees a lack of specific training and a lack of time inhibiting child care workers’ ability to intervene.
‘From my experience, I think [early childhood educators] get quite a lot of training about children’s development but perhaps not enough training in managing difficult behaviour. Of more concern is the high staff/child ratios, the huge number of expectations placed on child care workers and the lack of support when they do encounter a child who is very difficult,’ Dr Harvey says.
Dr Harvey says it takes a special kind of person to work as an early childhood educator. A drought in qualified staff—such as the one currently being experienced across the country—makes it doubly difficult to do the job well. ‘The ideal child care worker needs to have warmth and enthusiasm for children and have the intellectual skills to develop a program based on the needs and developmental levels of the children in her/his care,’ Dr Harvey says. Such workers are as important in arming the Matildas and Harrys of this world with skills to defend themselves against bullies as they are in reforming the behavior of the bullies themselves.
Dr Ken Rigby, author of Bullying in Schools and what to do about it, says that helping children become more resilient is an important part of combating the effects of bullying. ‘We know that children who feel supported by teachers and parents can take a great deal more bullying. Support acts as a protective pillow.’
If children do not have the support they require to develop resilience and skills in handling bullies, the psychological effects can be ongoing, he says. ‘Children who have been bullied are scared of certain social situations. They get nervous amongst groups of strangers; they can have bouts of depression. A small minority of children who are bullied do strike back. There was a case in a UK paper that I read about where a child who was bullied constantly stabbed the child who had been bullying him.’
In the short term, bullied children like Sean (who has made it to Year One without a broomstick) can lose self-confidence and become anxious, even depressed. Ten per cent of children who are bullied stop trying to endure it and skip school. In the case of five-year-old Sean, he begged to stay home from school. His grandmother, Yvonne Walsh, received anxious phone calls from her daughter unsure what approach she should take. Should she tell Sean to ‘just ignore them’, ‘keep his chin up’ and ‘grin and bear it’? Or should she tell him that he didn’t and shouldn’t have to put up with being bullied?
‘It was right from when he was on the bus. Once his face was pushed into the bubbler, just jostling and if you know you’re going to get picked on when you get on the bus … I remember one time he just ran back into the house and said he didn’t want to go,’ Yvonne says.
When she asked her boss, Judy Radich, for advice, she had no doubt that the outcome of Sean’s bullying would not be a thick skin and that it had to be stopped. Yvonne passed on the message. ‘Sometimes we think, “Oh this will just go away”, but Judy was adamant, and I learnt the importance of nipping it in the bud and taking it seriously, just thinking this is not allowed to happen,’ Yvonne says. ‘I think the support from his mum, the one-on-one interaction and the way he was made to feel special and supported helped him. It was taken seriously rather than just, you know, “get over it”. He is a very special kid, but I’m biased I suppose.’
In a recent question-and-answer session on her website, J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, offered some advice for victims without a broomstick or a wizard at their disposal. ‘I know that it is very hard to admit that you are being bullied but it is absolutely crucial if you are to end the misery. Life in school can be very tough and any adult who has forgotten that is an idiot, so don't be ashamed, just tell,’ Rowling said.
If only it were as simple as overcoming a fear of ‘dibba-dobbing’. ‘Just telling’ may not be so simple to a child. Staff ratios mean one child care worker for every five babies, one for every eight under three-year-olds, and one for every 10 three to six-year-olds. In primary schools, one teacher has to supervise an average of 16.9 students. ‘You can have all the knowledge in the world but without the time to plan and the appropriate number of people to assist, you can’t do much,’ Dr Harvey says.
Jen Reid
Jen is a freelance writer and journalism student at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), with a specific interest in social justice and early childhood issues.
References
Tremblay, R. (2004). Decade of behaviour distinguished lecture: Development of physical aggression during infancy. Infant Mental Health Journal, 25(5), 399-407.
Rigby, K. (1996). Bullying in Schools and what to do about it. Sydney: Australian Council for Educational Research.
Further information about aggression
For a further resource on early childhood aggression, see Aggression and young children by Diane Louise Szarkowicz. Published by Early Childhood Australia and priced at $14.95, it can be purchased by calling: (02) 6242 1800.
In addition, the Australian Council of Educational Research is running a series of professional development workshops focusing on building social competence and managing difficult behaviours for staff in early childhood centres. The workshops are run by expert presenters and sponsored by the Telstra Foundation so there is no cost to participants. If you would like to discuss running a workshop for your centre or group of centres, please email Alison Elliott (elliott@acer.edu.au).
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