Dr. Laura:

When my son was in kindergarten and my daughter in fourth grade, a boy who was in my daughter's grade and much bigger than she began bullying my son while at the bus stop in front of our house.  As far as my wife and I know, it hadn't happened before, but that day, he began pushing and knocking our son around.  We were watching from the house as we did every day until they boarded the bus.  Before we were able to take action by going outside, our daughter threw a right cross to the boy, knocking him down.

We saw that he wasn't really injured as much as embarrassed by getting hit by a girl.  She gave him a warning to never do that to her brother again.  We never went outside and never heard from the boy's parents who lived down the block.  Of course, it never happened again.

When our kids came home, we thanked our daughter for protecting our son and discussed the need to not initiate that kind of contact without proper cause.  They are now respectively 34 and 30 years old and continue to be very close, as we all are.  

Ron