Isolation from their peers sets victims up for depression and anxiety during the pivotal adolescent years and beyond.  This social marginalization is probably more damaging to them in the long run than the bullying itself.  Worse, the maltreatment by both bullies and peers compels them not to trust others.  They perceive themselves as incompetent in social situations and have a low view of their abilities.  They underperform both professionally and personally.

The list of victim characteristics reeks with the results of parental overprotection.  Bully victims often come from overprotective homes where they get little, if any, practice handling conflict; as a result, they have little, if any, confidence in their ability to negotiate the world on their own.  Overprotection prevents them from learning the skills necessary to avoid exploitation.

Taking matters into one’s own hands can bring unforeseen consequences, like when Tianna Onyebuagum of Goodletsville, Tennessee, told her son, Kenneth London, to strike back against his oppressor.  He hit fifteen-year-old D’Angelo Karr with a rock and killed him.  Onyebuagum received one year of probation; her son will live the rest of his life with the memory of unjustifiable homicide.

Other parents have even become so fed up and angst-ridden that they’ve taken matters into their own hands, desperate and enraged after abdications of authority and a vacuum of common decency.  Like Liang Jiqian, of China, a father sentenced to death for killing four boys and one woman and seriously injuring two other children.  His son was continually bullied by local kids and villagers due to a bone disease that left the boy unable to speak or walk. 

But it’s the school shootings that hit us the hardest, as they should.  Is there a place more important to communities than where their children gather to learn and socialize?  A school shooting wounds us more as a community than a shooting inside a house of worship, than inside a court of law.  Adults see schools as a tender place, a kind of greenhouse that cannot endure real-life elements too long without freezing or scorching what’s inside. Our children are the focal point of so much worry and hope.

Our assumption is part of the problem.  Those inside are not getting the protection they need.  We can go ahead and blame “bad teachers” and self-serving school policies on bullying if it makes us feel better.  But that will only make matters worse.

It’s true, not every teacher should be teaching.  And some studies show that an alarming number of teachers not only don’t see clear incidents of bullying, but their lack of action when they do witness bullying is dismal.

However, what about a parent’s inability to raise a child who would know inside that it’s wrong to continually strip another person of common dignity?  Isn’t this where the problem begins?  We’re expecting schools to perform modern-day miracles.  We’re expecting them to reform children who receive inadequate parenting year after uninterrupted year.  Teachers and administrators are not the root cause of this cultural problem, and it’s not ultimately their task to correct it.