051: How to handle social exclusion

“I don’t want to play with you.” “You’re not my friend.” “We’re playing families.  If you want to play, you have to be the dog.” Seems like everyone can remember a time when something like this happened to them as a child, and how much it hurt.  Children still say these things to each other – and we see how much it hurts them, too.  When researchers ask them, every child can remember a time when they were excluded – yet no child ever reports being the excluder! One of my listeners recommended that I read the book You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, in which the author (who is a teacher) proposes and then introduces a rule that you can’t say “you can’t play.”  A few researchers (including Professor Jamie Ostrov, with whom we’ll talk today) have since tested the approach: does it work?  If not, what should we do instead? Since most of these situations occur in preschool and school, teacher Caren co-interviews Professor Ostrov with me: we have some great insights for teachers as well as lots of information for parents on how to support both children and teachers in navigating these difficult situations.   References Allen, S.S. (2014). Narratives of women who suffered social exclusion in elementary school. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation. Antioch University, Culver City, CA DeVooght, K., Daily, S., Darling-Churchill, K., Temkin, D., Novak, B.A., & VanderVen, K. (2015, August). Bullies in the block area: The early childhood origins of “mean” behavior. Child Trends. Retrieved from https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2015-31BulliesBlockArea.pdf (https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2015-31BulliesBlockArea.pdf) Haney, M., & Bissonnette, V. (2011). Teachers’ perceptions about the use of play to facilitate development and teach prosocial skills. Creative Education 2(1), 41-46. Helgeland, A., & Lund, I. (2016). Children’s voic