By Frank Lucasale 1. She’d worked 27 years in public schools. She said the sentence after a parent complain her son was “too gentle” and got pick on. The psychologist shook her head: “Bullying isn’t trigger by weakness. It’s trigger by children who never learned how to signal boundaries at home — because their parents override every emotion for them.”
2. She explain a pattern she’d seen thousands of times: kids who get bullied aren’t the quiet ones — they’re the ones whose parents constantly say, “Don’t make a fuss,” “Be nice,” “Let it go,” “Don’t say that, it’s rude,” whenever the child tries to express anger, discomfort, or disagreement. “These kids never learn the micro-muscles of pushback,” she said. “Their face shows hesitation. Their body shows permission.”
3. She gave a real example: a boy named Leo. At home, his mother corrected every negative emotion — she called it “teaching kindness.” At school, Leo’s classmates sensed the gap: he didn’t protest when someone took his seat, his pencils, even his lunch. “Kids don’t look for victims,” the psychologist said. “They look for signals of someone who won’t retaliate. Leo wasn’t weak — he was train not to defend himself.”
4. Another case was a girl whose father solved every conflict for her — stepping in with teachers, parents, coaches. “She never learned the tone, the posture, the boundary sentence,” the psychologist said. “So other kids tested her every day. Children sniff out overprotected kids the same way animals sniff out suppressed instincts.”
5. Her final line was brutal: “If you teach your child to avoid conflict, you teach the world to give them conflict.” The solution isn’t toughness — it’s practice. Let your child say “stop.”, negotiate. Let them express anger without shaming it. Because the fastest way to make a child a target is to raise them to believe they’re not allowe to take up space.