> There's a point at which the child cannot possibly deal with it and you as the parent must step in to protect them, but most of the time if a child learns how to deal with bullies you don't need to.
And the next step isn't to start arguing about what does, and doesn't, constitute a bully.
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The way my mother tells it, I started crying when I got into the car after school and wouldn't tell her what was going on. After the 3rd day in a row she got very insistent, I finally told her and she never left that parking lot before having it cleared up with the school. They removed me from her class and put me in another class with a teacher named Mrs Parker (whom I adored).
You're mistaken if you think my argument is that there aren't situations in which the parent MUST step in.
Yeah, that sounds like a situation where you needed someone else to stand up for you, and I think that's a lot more common.
If you can get out of it on your own toughness alone, it probably wasn't bullying. It's part of the definition of bullying that it's one-sided, that the victim has no good ways to fight back.
If they DO have a way to fight back, it's called conflict, not bullying. It's of course possible that one side in a conflict is a big jerk, a wannabe thug, etc.
One of the big conclusions from bullying research is that treating bullying as if it was conflict (e.g. teaching kids "negotiation strategies") makes things actively worse.
I don't care what you call it, if person A starts mistreating person B and person B knows how to deal with these situations, person A will quickly stop mistreating person B.
Your argument here appears to be that bullying if person A doesn't eventually fight back. I don't agree with that, but I'm not willing to argue over the names of things.
