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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It doesn't start in kindergarten.

Mean girl behavior, as in the bullying kind, doesn't really emerge until middle school.

There are incidents where kids are are unkind to each other in younger years but that's more just fumbling and immaturity. It's not systemic and deliberate taunting/exclusion etc. [/quote]

Agree it's not systemic and is a mark of immaturity, but it absolutely starts before middle school. It's just that by middle school it becomes more organized and can escalate to bullying.

But you actually have to teach your kids both how not to engage in this behavior, and also how to handle it when others do, much younger. Many of these kids are trying on behaviors they see older kids (or even adults) engage in, or sometimes imitating questionable media they are consuming. So even if it's not this organized bullying you see in MS or HS, it's similar behaviors and it still has the power to really harm kids. You can't just say "oh they don't know what they are doing, they don't mean it" as though the behaviors have no impact until they are older. It's a learned behavior and this is how they learn it.[/quote]

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