5 year old ruminating on "bullying" that happened 2+ years ago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 5 year old is doing as well as any in the pandemic - stressed, bored, ready to get back to normal, but generally happy with her pod and in good spirits. She's not an anxious kid normally, but may be showing some symptoms lately. She's recently been talking about constant stomach aches, and saying she's sad. When I ask why she's sad she says it's because she can't stop thinking about some mean girl dynamics that happened at preschool TWO YEARS ago. I don't even remember it being a big deal at the time, but I guess a group of girls were exclusionary and picked on some of the other kids. Now she's telling me all kinds of details and clearly thinking about it a lot. Is this just something she's fixating on because she needs somewhere to channel the stress and anxiety we're all feeling? Is this a symptom of anxiety? It's totally foreign to me, but maybe something other kids do?

* When she brings it up we talk about bullies and how to handle mean kids, and try to work through the feelings and talk about how she can handle situations like that next time. She's with her life long BFF now, so I'm sure she's not experiencing any bullying currently.

Has she had exposure to much social interaction this year?,
The best way to deal with bad memories is to over write them with good. That's very hard to do in the pandemic.
Make it a point to get as much social interaction in every week as you csn

For sure not as much or as deeply as before. She sees her pod friend and plays outside with neighbors and cousins, but is really missing the school environment. I think that's part of why these old memories are coming up again. Their worlds are just so much smaller than usual and they don't have the long term perspective to understand that this is temporary and will pass. Heck, that's hard for all of us to remember these days. Thanks, PP, good reminder that we need to be creating new memories to over write the old bad ones.

[Anonymous]

She is trying to make sense of her world. Let her talk it through. Gently direct her to what she does have control over. She may not be experiencing bullying now, but with pandemic perhaps it's a similar stress of not being in control

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could it be something new is going on and she’s using the older bullying events as a proxy?

This was my first reaction too.

[Anonymous]

OP, she is still really young. You say she wants to "get back to normal" but the pandemic year has been 1/5th of her life, and really, 1/3 of her school aged life. For all she knows this IS normal.

For social situations with kids that young, I recommend role play. With my daughter, My Little Ponies were really big when she was 4-6. We would bring out all the ponies and role play whatever was bothering her. Don't talk about bullies. But whatever the problem was -- kids telling other kids they can't play? Have her act it out with the ponies, or dolls, or whatever she has a lot of. (My son would role play with Thomas or Jay Jay -- you can see how old I am!)

[Anonymous]

This sounds like anxiety/ocd. My DD will often not be able to stop thinking about things that bother her as well. Trying to get her to stop thinking about things only makes it worse. I would suggest a therapist to help her work through these events with her.

[Anonymous]

This is exactly the type of thing I’d ask a professional. Should be no bid deal but probably needs to be handled well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 5 year old is doing as well as any in the pandemic - stressed, bored, ready to get back to normal, but generally happy with her pod and in good spirits. She's not an anxious kid normally, but may be showing some symptoms lately. She's recently been talking about constant stomach aches, and saying she's sad. When I ask why she's sad she says it's because she can't stop thinking about some mean girl dynamics that happened at preschool TWO YEARS ago. I don't even remember it being a big deal at the time, but I guess a group of girls were exclusionary and picked on some of the other kids. Now she's telling me all kinds of details and clearly thinking about it a lot. Is this just something she's fixating on because she needs somewhere to channel the stress and anxiety we're all feeling? Is this a symptom of anxiety? It's totally foreign to me, but maybe something other kids do?

* When she brings it up we talk about bullies and how to handle mean kids, and try to work through the feelings and talk about how she can handle situations like that next time. She's with her life long BFF now, so I'm sure she's not experiencing any bullying currently.

Don't be so sure about that. At age 5, with what she's talking about, she may be trying to express that something is happening now but she's couching it in other terms. Like asking for a friend...