A Class I child told his friend that he went to Singapore for a holiday and not to a desert city in the country like his friend.

A girl in the primary section was made fun of because she brought rice, dal and vegetables for tiffin instead of what they considered to be more fancy items like pizza or pasta.

A Class III student wanted to know from his friend what phone she was using, while she boasted of a certain model.

The nature of bullying has changed, said teachers in several schools. The worrying part is that it begins at a much younger age, they said.

A lot of bullying stems from growing intolerance towards each other’s habits and practices, said a principal.

A tendency to show off what a child has and what another one does not often ends up in bullying, said a teacher.

“There is a tendency to put down their peers. It now starts at a much younger age, like four or five years old,” said Pratima Nayar, principal, junior school, Calcutta International School.

A child who is four or five would be in the pre-primary section of a school.

Exposure of children to a lot of things on the internet or in real life has made them more demanding, said Suman Sood, director, BD Memorial Junior School and core committee member of Early Childhood Association, a forum of pre-schools.

“A lot of content or characters that they see on television or the internet make children imitate them and become more dominating over others,” said Sood.

The immediate gratification of the demands by parents — sometimes to satisfy their children and on other occasions to address their guilt because they cannot give the children enough time — leads to more serious problems, said Sood.

“There has to be a change in the way some children are being brought up. Most of the children would visit a mall on weekends because their parents are not keen on spending one morning at a park with them. Parents have to make efforts to create experiences for their children...,” said Sood.

Earlier, bullying would be about eating others’ tiffin on the sly or perhaps excluding somebody on the sports field.

“Attacks have become more personal now,” said a teacher.

“Children do not want to listen to one another or wait for their turn. The root cause is the family where they are privy to unfiltered conversation, and that reflects in a child’s conversation in school,” said Nayar.

Several teachers said that the age at which children bully one another has gone down further in the last few years.

“Earlier, bullying was a more common phenomenon in middle school, but now we receive complaints of bullying right from primary classes,” said Satabdi Bhattacharjee, principal, South City International School.