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Not long ago, one of my 2-year-old's day care classmates bit him real hard.

His teachers wouldn't tell me who did it. That's their policy, and it's probably for the best. Otherwise, I just might have urged my 5-year-old to go teach that little bully a lesson on the playground.

I'm kidding, of course.

But the incident did make me wonder what to do if my kids are bullied, or if they pick on other children.

When I was a kid, I got bullied a bit. I admit that I bullied a few kids myself. I don't remember any adults getting involved in those situations. But these days, people seem to pay greater attention to the harmful effects of bullying.

In recent years, school divisions have implemented whole curriculums to combat it. Earlier this decade, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration launched a major anti-bullying initiative, including a Web site, stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov -- which is targeted to children, but also has information for adults.

Back in 1987, a study still widely cited indicated that children identified as bullies at age 8 had a one-in-four chance of having a criminal record by age 30 -- five times more likely than the population at large.

Statistics like that should make any parent think twice about old-fashioned sayings such as "boys will be boys" when it comes to bullying.

To try to get up to speed on what parents and teachers are doing to stop bullying these days, I called some people with a lot more knowledge about the issue than me. I was relieved to hear that what happened to my younger son was fairly common.

Tina Hurst, who owns the Building Bridges Child Development Center in Dublin, said that 2-year-olds bite fairly often because they lack the communication skills to deal with conflict in other ways.

At her center, which my sons do not attend, Hurst deters biting by providing enough toys to prevent conflicts and having teachers "shadow" biters. But incidents still happen, and when they do, her teachers will encourage biters to take part in comforting the victim.

"We really want them to understand that it hurts, and it helps them feel compassion as well," Hurst said.

In one persistent case, Hurst asked a biter's parent to come by the school during the day, right after an incident, figuring the break in routine would show the child how unacceptable it is to chomp one's peers.

Asking parents to take a child out of school for a two-week "sabbatical" is another extreme method that has worked, Hurst said.

One tactic that is never a good idea, Hurst said, is to physically punish a child to discourage him or her from hurting someone else -- doing that will just confuse a child about the acceptability of violence.

The dynamics of bullying changes as children age, but good communication among parents, teachers and children will make it easier to address at any grade level.

Radford University Professor of Criminal Justice Tod Burke, a former police officer, co-authored a chapter in a forthcoming book on bullying and gives presentations about the problem to students. (He alerted me to the study I mentioned above.)

Burke urges parents who suspect that their child is being bullied to find out all the information they can about the situation because children may not report it themselves, and even when they do, they may not tell the whole truth.

"Just because a kid comes home with a black eye doesn't mean he wasn't the instigator," Burke said. "He may have just lost that fight."

There are warning signs that a child is the target of a bully. Showing up at home with torn clothes is an obvious one, but if a child suddenly is reluctant to participate in activities he or she enjoyed, parents should investigate why, said Sharon Zuckerwar, supervisor of social sciences and character education for Montgomery County Public Schools.

Because bullying often takes place at school, both she and Burke said, parents who suspect a problem should approach teachers with their concerns and discuss ways to address them together.

But they warn that bullying situations can take some time to resolve, so parents should not expect problems to magically disappear once concerns are raised.

Teachers can keep an eye out for problems, but they cannot be everywhere. Zuckerwar said that parents can do a lot to prevent "hot spots for bullying" off school grounds.

"Parents can get together to take turns and supervise at a bus stop," she said. "If kids are bullied on a neighborhood playground, have somebody out there watching it."

When parents and teachers both acknowledge the seriousness of bullying, and take steps to stop it, it not only makes bullying less likely to happen, but it also makes kids who had been bullied feel safer, Zuckerwar said.

"Letting them know that we are watching for bullying behavior and won't tolerate it, that really does make a difference," she said.

Albert Raboteau is a former Roanoke Times writer who works for Virginia Tech and lives in Blacksburg. You can e-mail him at ajraboteau@gmail.com.