Many kindergarten students find themselves verbally and physically abused
by their playground peers, but by the time they reach first grade, an increasing
amount of the harassment centers on a smaller group of perpetual victims,
say James Snyder, Ph.D., of Wichita State University and colleagues. The
research appears in the journal Child Development.
“Some children experienced harassment with great regularity. Other
children appeared to respond effectively to aggression by peers such that
harassment experiences became increasingly intermittent,” Snyder
said.
More research is needed “to understand how some children learn to
effectively cope with or avoid repeated victimization while others do not,” he
adds.
Boys who experienced growing harassment were more likely to demonstrate
antisocial and depressive behaviors, according to their teachers. In turn,
boys who were antisocial and depressed seemed to elicit more victimization.
Girls who were victimized in kindergarten were more likely to engage in
antisocial behavior at home as they got older, while they acted more and
more depressed at school if their victimization increased, the researchers
found.
The boys’ antisocial behavior seemed to free them from harassment
for a little while, but may have increased the likelihood of being victimized
by their peers over the long run, according to Snyder. Girls’ antisocial
behavior, on the other hand, made them more likely targets for victimization
in the short and long term.
The researchers watched 266 students from a single elementary school interact
on the playground on multiple occasions from the start of kindergarten
to the end of first grade, counting the instances of aggression and victimization.
“Substantial rates of victimization were observed. On average, children
were targets of peer physical or verbal harassment about once very three
to six minutes,” Snyder says.
Parents and teachers provided information on the students’ antisocial
behaviors, like arguing, bullying and tantrums, and how often they seemed
sad, lonely or withdrawn.
