When my son finally told me what was happening, I immediately approached his teacher. Expecting sympathy and swift action, she instead impassively said she’d have the school counselor come in to talk to the whole class about bullying. “The whole class?” I objected. “But this is a particular boy — why dilute the messages when we know the identity of the child involved?” She said that bullying is better handled in this manner.

I then went to the school principal, who coolly explained that privacy rules prevented him from letting me know if the parents of the bully had been told. Predictably, these milquetoast gestures did nothing to alleviate the situation and my son had a tough year.

Some positive things did come out of our experience. It gave me an opportunity to have lots of conversations about what it means to be a good person. Now three years later, we work hard to avoid the bully, and my son has developed into a very sensitive young man who is quickly aware of how other people are treated, and he will always stick up for those left out or sidelined. He also naturally gravitates toward other kind kids — the underdogs, the smart kids, the sweet and more sensitive kids, and the ones who are close to their parents.

This experience also made me rather cynical when it comes to school-based anti-bullying efforts. While well meaning, they are simply a labor-intensive show to demonstrate something’s being done when there’s really nothing much at all being done to actually discourage bad behavior.