They Don’t Like Me
Lessons on Bullying and Teasing
From a Preschool Classroom

by Jane Katch
Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2003

Review by Jacqui James
Co-editor, UU Faith Works

When Toby told Noah “We don’t like you,” he was trying to make a place for himself in the preexisting friendship between Sean and Russell. When Noah told Timmy, “I really only like to play with five-year-olds,” he was working hard to enter the older boys’ group. Now Zoe “can’t play with a total strange” just when she is trying to establish a friendship with Ariel and Gwynn. When they are most vulnerable and least confident of the position they strive for, each of these children is most determined to keep a newer child out. Must exclusion, I wonder, be the price of a secure place in the group?

In this book Jane Katch explores the painful problems of bullying, teasing, and exclusion. She watches her class of four and five-year-olds begin to form exclusionary groups and tells us what happens when she tries to intervene. She wonders if it is possible to teach children to create social groups that aren’t defined by excluding others.

Her classroom has a rule based on Vivian Paley’s work: “You can’t say you can’t play.” It works well until a new child joins the class and insists on having things her way and wants the other children’s play to conform only to her wishes.

This child’s troublemaking prompts Katch to better understand why some children exclude others. Talking with her brother, who teased her as a child, with high-schoolers, and, as always, with her class, she comes to new understandings of why some children bully, how other children get through the experience, and how she as a teacher might best intervene.

The book provides a fascinating look into the social lives of children and is a book for parents and teachers who are trying to understand how to prevent exclusion and how to support children who are being bullied.