One day, L came over to Ar and just kept saying, “No!” right in his face, which would have more normally been responded to with even more and louder, “No”s and whining high pitched voices, and screaming. The second way that the children learned to refuse L’s bids is something we actually learned from one of the children, Ar. And so gradually, L stopped making so many offers… The skills they developed during rough housing gave them the physical and emotional skills to refuse to accept his pestering / bullying bids. Now, L would push, and they could just brush it off, or ignore it, or walk away, or even push back. Before, L would push and get screaming, whining, yelling in response. The children also just got used to rough physical contact, which took away the power that L had to get them upset.
Pester playfully how to#
The children also learn how to brace their body for a fall, to tense their muscles before a dog pile, to communicate when it’s too much, to stop when someone has communicated it’s too much, to recognize when to take a break, and whether to relax for a while or recover quickly to get back in the action. Rough housing offers lots of opportunity to encounter episodes of getting into trouble during play and working on its repair. Over time, as the children became more expert at rough housing, multiple novices playing might roughhouse with expert at the same time and then gradually it became more and more the novices rough housing with each other. We would push them over playfully, bear hug them and roll them across the carpet, pretend to smash them, throw them into something, let them jump on us. It started with mostly the expert rough-housers (i.e, Bethany and Brian), mostly manipulating the kids’ bodies around, keeping it feeling exciting and even a bit scary, but still safe. Several months ago, we started teaching the kids to rough-house. We didn’t necessarily know we were doing it at first, but we quickly noticed its effects. One way we worked on the kids being better at refusing acts of pestering, was through the development of physical and emotional resilience to physicality. This lines up with the notion that such problems are community problems (not just individual problems), and everyone must share responsibility for helping to repair trouble. But it is just as important to work on the other side–that is help the children to refuse the offer.
One way to address the pestering and bullying is to work on preventing the offer (or bid) from happening–that is to work to stop L’s behavior. It is like a contract–an offer and an acceptance. Only in retrospect, can the initial act be declared a pester or bully. One person starts with a bid–an action offered as a pester or bully, and the second person has to respond by acknowledging it as so.
So, one thing I have realized recently about acts of “pestering” or “bullying” is that it actually takes two (or more) to make that dance happen. Like, “Oh you are going to scream when I push you? I wonder if you’ll always do that… What if I only pretend to push you but don’t actually push you? Oh, cool, this is kind of fun… oh if I steal this toy, you are going to scream, and then an adult is gonna come swooping in. But anyway, L definitely had the power to make the other children upset by pushing them or stealing toys, and it was something he was definitely exploring and trying out. At the time, I think I saw it as bullying? I’m not sure at this moment how the pestering and bullying are or aren’t related. L’s pestering used to be more physically aggressive, often pushing. I forgot to mention another thing I have learned through our struggles with L’s pestering.
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