I agree, kids don’t need to be bullied to understand injustice. But when kids are bullied, and mom and dad solve their problems for them (that is, if the bully doesn’t beat the ever loving hell out of the bullied kid for telling), they don’t learn to deal with this kind of tough, unfair situation.

Most parents do TRY to teach their kids–but I’d assert that most parents wouldn’t know what would be effective or useful in that situation. Often, advice from parents makes it worse. On this, I speak from personal experience (myself and friends of mine). Often, parents were bullied as kids too, are still affected by it, and still have no clue how to deal with bullies.

-there is injustice in the world.
-sometimes–but not always–people are beating on you because you’re being a dick.
-there are people in this world who are huge dickheads and will pick on you for no good reason.
-it’s important to tell the difference between these two situations.
-you sometimes have to stand up for yourself.

There’s a fine line between parents helping kids going through the bullying and parents solving their kids’ problems. These issues should be taken seriously, and parents CAN help–but not by doing things like talking to the other kid’s parents. That helps nobody.

Instead, parents need to teach their kids how to cope with the pain, how to fight back when necessary, and how to avoid unnecessary conflict. IMO, the problem is that most parents don’t know how to do this themselves. So they either tell their kids to suck it up, or they go to the principal or bully’s parents and try to stop it that way, which inevitably makes it worse for the kid.

–Sorry, had to do that.