Verbal abuse in kindergarten

Violence is a phenomenon that has always been and will always be present. We know several types of violent behavior and one of them is verbal violence. The occurrence of verbal violence in various forms is already percepted in preschool environment and it's very important that preschool teachers use appropriate strategiesat their work for preventing and resolving verbal peer violence. We used the descriptive method of work. We reviewed domestic and foreign professional literature. We also used the method of compilation and synthesis and the quantitative method, the instrument of which was the survey questionnaire. We figured out that preschool teachers have an appropriate attitude towards verbal violence. They are aware of the importance of their role in preventing and resolving verbal violence. We also figured out that verbal violence in Slovenian kindergartens most often occurs in the form of mockery and tounting, while the abusive language and threats are the least frequent. In preventing and resolving verbal violence, the most commonly used strategy is talking to all the children in the group that we don't allow violence and that they involve parents and other professionals only when other approaches proves as ineffective. Experts from educational field are certainly aware of the problematics ov violence, although this phenomenon is more explored in school than in the preschool environment. We think that would make sense to include more contents on preventing and resolving violence among children in the programs of education of preschool teachers thus strenghthing their competencies in this field. It would be interesting to make a longitudinal study of how children who were already more problematic in kindergarten behave later in elementary school and how frequent exposure to violence impacts on psycho-social development of the victim