It is a very painful and scary thing for parents to learn that their child is being bullied. Though my four — now young adults — were relatively popular and athletic kids, I watched them go through bullying several times. It was one of the the harder problems I faced as a dad, and it’s the topic we are asking our readers to discuss this week: Do I intervene on behalf of my children or hold back and let them work out the problem themselves?

At times, it wasn’t until after the fact that I learned they were being bullied. And I think that’s probably true more often than not — our kids go through these things and never tell us. I know that was the case for me when I was a kid, as I wrote in a parenting column several years back. For me, the most painful bullying I suffered was emotional, not physical. When I was in junior high I was frozen out by my three closest friends, who, one day, for no apparent reason, stopped talking to me and never did again. When that happened, the last thing I wanted was for my parents to get involved. I feared if they did, I would