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.
Actual bullies have a very keen sense of how the victim might fight back and what it would cost them. And they go ahead with the bullying - breaking down a person, because they can - because they know the victim can't effectively fight back.
I once had a teacher make me stand outside in the hall behind the coats in the coat rack (ALL DAY), don't tell me I know nothing about bullies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33808521
> 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.
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.
Outside of that, they need to be taught that buttholes exist and dealing with them is a fact of life. They shouldn't start things, but they definitely should end them. That was the metric for us while in school, especially if we got into "fisticuffs".
I think for you it's important to understand that school and teachers can't be trusted. I'm not saying teachers suck, but shitty teachers exist. My middle brother once had a teacher take a dislike to him because he corrected her in class. I once had a teacher that would make me stand out in the hall behind the coats on the coat rack. My mother showed up at the school for both, I was pulled from that class and put into another class with a teacher named Mrs Parker, whom I absolutely adored. I still remember the song we would sing at the beginning of class (about parking cars).
My point is that if your child is having an issue with a teacher, don't assume it's the child, my experience is that it very often wasn't. You build trust with your children by SHOWING them that you're there for them. Of course, that doesn't mean every poor interaction with a teacher is the teachers fault. We were dirt poor so I suspect that had something to do with it as well.
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Anyways, none of that is really concrete, I don't know that concrete advice really applies to a question like that. Imo, kids learn what you teach them even if you don't know you're teaching them, and there is no such thing as a single glorifying lesson, it's a slow march over time, exactly as you would do to build trust with someone.
The only thing you can teach a bullied child to do is to fight back. They will lose the fight but the bully will usually move on to an easier target.