Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding, 

Last week, my 6-year-old son “Mitchell” grabbed his classmate “Peter” around the waist to stop him from cutting in line for the slide at recess. This is according to Mitchell; the email from his teacher just said that he was rough with one of his classmates on the playground. I don’t think that he’s lying about what happened. This is the first time we’ve gotten any reports from school about bad behavior, but it sounds like the kind of thing he might do, and what he described sounded like the level of seriousness that the teacher indicated in her email. He missed the rest of recess, which seemed like an adequate punishment for a first offense, so we talked about what the consequences will be if it happens again and left it at that.

I ran into Peter’s mom on a walk a few days later and apologized for the incident. She said that Peter was traumatized by being “bullied” and is afraid to go to school now. I was shocked. My husband thinks Peter’s mom is being dramatic, and I’m inclined to agree. There’s a reason we’re not taking this more seriously, and it might be problematic.

See, we don’t like Peter or his parents. We see them frequently at the neighborhood playground and Peter is rough with other kids. I’ve regularly seen him push other kids, even smaller ones, out of his way. His parents never intervene to correct his behavior but are quick to jump in if they think another kid is being remotely unfair to him.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with Mitchell’s behavior at school. He’s responsible for his own actions. But I know that our opinion of Peter is influencing my husband’s view of the situation and it’s possible that it’s coloring mine more than I care to admit. I’m wondering if we need to follow up on this or if I just need to leave it alone for now?

—Bully’s Mom

Dear Mom, 

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I appreciate that you’re trying to account for your biases in this situation. Kids who are mean or rough can absolutely be victims of other kids’ cruelty, too, so I think keeping an open mind about school dynamics is always a good idea. But in this case, you’re overthinking it a bit. Take Peter out of it for a moment—this is the first incident you’ve heard of regarding Mitchell’s behavior. I think that if he was truly bullying another kid, you would have had additional reports before today. True bullying is repeated aggressive behavior that is targeted at someone with less power. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

You can be prudent and ask the teacher if they recall seeing any other problematic behavior from your son, just to be sure, or use this as a way to ask them to keep her eyes out in the future. And certainly try to probe further if Peter’s mom or any other parent shares concerns with you. But absent any other information, I think you can chalk this up to a single incident that spooked a kid who might not be used to other kids pushing back on his behavior.

—Allison

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