A few weeks ago, I got called into my 14-year-old son’s school.

“He has bullied another child,” I was told, “and will be suspended for three days.”

I was aghast and confused. My son—who, like a typical 14-year-old, is certainly not perfect—is not a bully.

“What happened, may I ask?” I asked the teacher.

“He called another student a name,” I was told.

“A name?” I was puzzled.

I learned some more details, none of which constituted bullying, and attempted to argue my case. I was told that the school had a zero-tolerance policy for name-calling and that the child—another 14-year-old boy—now felt “unsafe” attending school. His parents, I was informed, were upset.

Unsafe?

These boys had spent four years in the same classroom. Yes, my son is a very tall white kid who can seem intimidating, but bullying is not what he’s about, and it certainly wasn’t what this was.

As I told this story to friends and other parents, many could relate. In our efforts to correct and protect our children from the kinds of abuse that our generation—and many generations before us—were subjected to unchecked, we may have gone too far.

Name-calling is now bullying. Asking someone to repeat a word because their accent wasn’t clear is discrimination. Patting a girl on her lower back the same way you would a guy friend in public is sexual harassment. Calling someone out for dishonesty or disloyalty is social aggression.

The “victims” of these “assaults,” therefore, need protection—from parents, teachers, and administrators—and are expected to carry the “trauma” of these events with them.

Some research suggests that this mindset may contribute to anxiety and depression in young people, while reinforcing a belief that the world is fundamentally unsafe and that they require constant protection from others. Children who are shielded from ordinary social conflict may grow up with a tendency to see themselves as victims, always looking for someone to blame. Many struggle to adjust to college and workplace environments. They may quit more easily and demonstrate a lower capacity to persevere through difficult situations.

We do our children a disservice when we intervene in every social interaction they dislike, amplifying its significance and projecting our own childhood experiences and unresolved wounds onto them.

Unfortunately, we still live in a world where bullying and various forms of abuse exist. Yet research tells us that such behaviors have declined significantly since the 1990s and that children today are, in many ways, safer in schools and neighborhoods than we were.

Not every difficult social interaction is trauma.

Not every inappropriate behavior is abuse.

That doesn’t mean these behaviors should be ignored. Talking to our children about them and helping them understand the impact of their actions is essential. But when everything becomes “trauma” and everything becomes “abuse,” the true meaning of those words is diluted.

Those who experience genuine trauma during childhood and adolescence may not be taken as seriously by their peers—or even by mental health professionals—if we reduce trauma to name-calling, teasing, negative comments, or occasional physical altercations.

Our children need to be taught, guided, and helped to understand the nuances of social situations. They need to be heard and encouraged to express themselves differently when necessary. They need to be given opportunities to learn from mistakes rather than immediately being labeled as “bullies,” “misogynists,” or “xenophobes.”

Otherwise, the meaning of these terms is lost, and we risk doing an entire generation a disservice. Eventually, they may come to reject the very principles we are trying to teach because those principles begin to feel disconnected from reality.

A similar phenomenon occurred during the War on Drugs in the 1970s, when children were told that a single puff of marijuana would inevitably lead to addiction, psychosis, and irreversible damage.

We all know how that turned out.

The campaign failed spectacularly and is often cited as one of the factors that undermined credibility with young people, contributing to increased skepticism toward anti-drug messaging in the decades that followed.

Kids are wiser than we often give them credit for. They can detect exaggeration and inconsistency remarkably well.

Let us not allow the pendulum of protection to swing so far that our children dismiss messages of kindness, tolerance, and non-discrimination altogether.

Let us resist the temptation to embrace what is merely popular and instead remain grounded in truth, reason, and common sense.

Our goal should be to teach children how to navigate a complex world—not to equip them with an overly simplistic set of rules that ultimately breeds resentment, fragility, and rebellion.

In the weeks following my son’s suspension, he was angry. He could sense the gross exaggeration of the consequences he received. While he admitted that he hadn’t been kind to the other child, he had a difficult time accessing genuine guilt and remorse because his anger at what he perceived as an injustice was getting in the way.

During those weeks, I had a difficult parenting job. I needed to validate his emotions and acknowledge the truth of what he was feeling, while also making sure he didn’t miss the lesson—that he had, in fact, hurt someone’s feelings.

My job was complex. I hope I succeeded in helping him find that balance.

Over time, his anger softened. As it did, he became more capable of focusing on his own actions rather than the school’s response. Eventually, he was able to express genuine remorse and regret, and to ask forgiveness from the other child.

The irony is that this process may have happened much sooner had the adults involved responded with greater proportion and nuance from the beginning.

Parenting is rarely about choosing sides. It is about helping our children hold two truths at once: that they may have been treated unfairly, and that they may also have caused harm. It is about teaching them accountability without shame, and resilience without callousness.

I hope my experience, along with the many similar stories I have heard from parents over the past few weeks, helps readers navigate the increasingly complex social world our children are growing up in. They deserve guidance, wisdom, and perspective—not simplistic labels or exaggerated narratives. And we owe them the kind of honesty that helps them grow into thoughtful, resilient adults.