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When my daughter started first grade, she raced off to school each morning, eager for the day ahead. Within a few weeks, however, she lost her enthusiasm and hung her head. “I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” she cried one night, as I tucked her into bed.

It turned out that a boy in her class was calling her “piggy” and making fun of her weight, and the other kids had joined in the name-calling. Our lovely girl will probably never be skinny, but she is healthy and active. My instinct was that “piggy” went beyond normal teasing (way beyond), but how do you know what’s bullying, and what’s normal? The very word “bullying” sets off emotional reactions in our communities, and many school administrators shut their eyes to all forms of social conflict, lest it be announced that their school has a “bullying problem.”

The conversation needs to be shifted away from fear and towards solutions. Social pain is very subjective, which means we need a common language for defining what bullying is. And what it is not.

This is why parents, teachers and kids can benefit from understanding the difference between normal social conflict and true bullying. Confusing the two has a problematic impact on how we help our kids. In normal social conflict, where each kid has relatively equal power, it is best for adults to avoid rescuing too soon. Let the kids try to work it out first.

In true bullying, however, adults should intervene quickly, because a power imbalance exists that limits the target’s ability to make the cruelty stop. So how do we know which situation a child is facing, bullying or normal social conflict?

Psychologists, researchers and bullying experts agree that a situation is bullying when it includes the following three conditions:

• It’s repetitive. If another child intentionally harms your kid just one time on the playground, this is not yet bullying. In my daughter’s case, she was being called piggy day after day.

•It’s unwanted. If another child teases your child, and your child is not laughing too, then this is unwanted aggression. The most common defense of an aggressor is, “I was just kidding!” Teach your child to say, “Kidding means both people are having fun. Now that you know I’m not having fun, you won’t do that again.”

•There’s a power imbalance. Bullying always occurs in the context of a power imbalance: someone bigger against someone smaller; privileged against minority; popular against less popular; etc.

When all three conditions of bullying occur, a fourth condition usually develops: fear. The target begins to fear the place where the bullying occurs. This is exactly what happened with my daughter, who cried that she wanted to stay home from school.

Normal social conflict tends to have an external focus. Social conflict is often about an outside item (two kids fighting over an iPad) or an outside relationship (two girls fighting over a boy they both like). If you were to remove the external factor, the problem would cease to exist.

In bullying, however, we often see an attack on someone’s internal identity, as in “you’re fat” or “you’re retarded.” Your appearance or your learning abilities are a core part of you and cannot be removed, leaving you feeling personally attacked and emotionally damaged.

Kids need to learn how to resolve normal social conflict by talking with each other respectfully about what is really the problem. In the absence of such skills, we see social conflict deteriorate into bullying: Instead of talking about her feelings of jealousy over a friend’s boyfriend, a child starts cruel rumors about the friend.

For many parents, just knowing whether a situation is indeed bullying or just normal social conflict provides a road map for how much to intervene. If a situation has been going on for more than a week, and it appears to involve the personal attacks of bullying, then it is always okay to call the school for help.

Happily for my little girl, her teacher responded immediately to the piggy situation and spoke to the boy who was the ringleader, as well as the followers. The taunting stopped. I was grateful and relieved when my daughter’s beautiful smile returned. The piggy taunts re-emerged a year later with a new ringleader, and once again, the school dealt with it effectively and quickly. We’re lucky to have the proper supports in place.