Your little one is getting picked on during the day ... Here's what you can do to protect her.

When your preschooler says, "Kids are mean to me" or "I hate so-and-so, and I don't want to play with him anymore," it's your first clue that something's up. In my case, the eye-opener was when my son, Kevin, brought home his preschool class picture. As he pointed from one smiling child to the next, he told me, "That's Thomas, that's Riley, that's Jenny, that's ..." (ominous drum roll, please) "my bully, that's ..."

Whoa there, little fella, back up. Back way up. A bully? In a preschool class of 3- and 4-year-olds? Don't bullies have to be older – or at least capable of opening their own milk at snack time? I scrutinized the image of the brown-haired, blue-eyed boy standing in the back row in the photograph. He wasn't scowling, and he didn't have Bluto-like muscles bulging underneath his ordinary little T-shirt. The "bully" didn't look like a bully at all; he looked like a little kid.

Still, the mama bear in me wanted to march right over to the school, grab that pup by the scruff of his neck and tell him that if he kept harassing my kid, he wouldn't live to see his fifth birthday. Rest assured, I did no such thing. But my protective impulse was fueled by Kevin's stories of being banned from the playground pirate fort and pinched during circle time. Maybe not life-threatening things, but definitely not nice either. And as it turns out, my son is not alone.

Not too Young to Be a Bully

With school bullying consistently in the media spotlight, most parents are aware that it's a serious problem. That's encouraging – but we're forgetting about our youngest and most vulnerable age group, the toddler and preschool crowd.

We once thought these kids were too young for the kind of tormenting we associate with bullying. But sadly, that's just not true – and because little-kid bullying is so surprising to many parents, it's not noticed as readily as in older kids, says Henry D. Schlinger, Ph.D., director of the applied behavior analysis program at California State University at Los Angeles. Adults dismiss it as "kids being kids."

It doesn't have to be that way, and that kind of attitude ignores the very real developmental leaps kids make in late toddlerhood. Before age 3, kids don't have the cognitive ability to feel empathy, says Brenda Nixon, a mom, former preschool teacher and author of The Birth to Five Book (Revelli; $12.99). So a child might hurt another kid emotionally or physically, but he doesn't really understand how that feels to his playmate. You can't really say that he's being mean. After 3, that changes: "The brain has the ability to understand another point of view, so that's the age that premeditated and purposeful aggression could begin," says Nixon. In other words, these little troublemakers should know better.

The reasons kids bully vary, says Schlinger. "Often, kids this age are imitating behavior they've seen before from a parent, sibling or friend," he says. Other kids turn to bullying to get attention, either from adults or peers. Still others bully for more complex reasons. "It's much more concerning when a child bullies because it makes him feel good to see signs of injury, fear or misery in his victim," says Schlinger. "That type of bully can be hard to stop."

Too often, parents and teachers take a wait-and-see approach with preschoolers. That's not helping anyone – the victim or the bully. "The problem with ignoring smaller incidents is that intervention doesn't happen until it reaches a crisis point or someone gets hurt," says Schlinger. Ouch! I was guilty of this. Before showing me his school picture, my son had told me time and time again that a boy was "bothering" him, and I'd dismissed it.

But When is it Just a Fight?

Experts define bullying as intentionally aggressive behavior, usually involving an imbalance of power and repeated over time. It can be verbal (put-downs, taunts, name calling), physical (pushing, kicking, punching) or relational (rumors, social rejection, exclusion).

Not all confrontational behavior can or should be defined as bullying, though. Kids are active and impulsive, and they're going to have spur-of-the-moment scuffles, friendship spats and wrestling matches that occasionally get out of hand. Everyday play-related conflict can make kids stronger because they learn through experience how to compromise, negotiate and forgive.

Bullying, on the other hand, does the exact opposite. It systematically undermines kids' self-esteem; whether it's physical or emotional, it can cause hurt feelings, fear and anxiety – even beginner bullying between little kids. Being picked on, pushed around and shunned is not acceptable at any age. And bullying can have consequences for bullies, too. They may have a hard time forming real friendships, which can lead to problematic relationships in all parts of their lives.

One way to tell the difference between conflict and bullying is to look at intent. A playmate might accidentally cause harm during a "That's mine!" or "No! I saw it first!" tug-of-war over a shovel in the sandbox. A bully, on the other hand, might snatch the shovel away and tell the other child that he'll throw sand in his face if he tries to get the shovel back. One possible sign of a bully? He's smiling during a dispute, says Barbara Coloroso, author of The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: From Preschool to High School – How Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence (Harper Paperbacks; $14.99). If two boys are fighting over a book and both boys are upset, that's conflict. If a child bashes your son over the head with a book and grins as your son cries, that's bullying, explains Coloroso. Not all bullies act this way, but most kids who do are bullies.

Another sign to watch for is sneakiness or secretive behavior: A bully doesn't want grown-ups to catch him in the act, so he'll carry out his bullying covertly; he knows what he's doing isn't right. Also, a bully will act as a ringleader and recruit others to join him, not just at school but at playdates or on the playground, too. When 3-year-old Dayna Donovan tried to join another group of girls running around the playground equipment, they deliberately ran away from her, says her mom, Suzanne. To Suzanne's dismay, Dayna kept running after the girls. They taunted Dayna and told her she wasn't allowed to go down the slide and threw wood chips on it when she attempted to slide down. "My heart broke when I could see from the look on her face that she understood what was going on," says Donovan. "Those little girls were being downright mean."

Bullying can be hard to identify because it can spark bad behavior from the "good" kid, too. Brisja Riggins's 3-year-old son, Brown, was taunted mercilessly by a boy in his nursery-school class. The boy would chant, "Browny towny, Browny towny, Browny towny" over and over until, finally, Brown got so angry and frustrated that he struck back and got in trouble. "There's only so much taunting a little boy can take before he's pressed beyond his ability to behave," says Riggins. That's where you come in.

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