Bullying is a complicated topic, but since this is a parenting column, I’d like to focus on how parents can better understand these dynamics and raise children with greater sensitivity and awareness.

The default explanation people often give, one I’ve seen in recent articles, is that a bully is simply an insecure kid who, in order to make himself feel better, puts someone else down. There is definitely some truth to that, but I want to share another very important idea about bullying.

Many years ago, I was driving in the car listening to sports radio. The sportscaster said that he had been heavily bullied by “Michael” in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, all through middle school, and that he was going to call the actual bully live on the air and confront him.

So he calls him and says, “Michael, this is Dave. I’m a sportscaster now, and I just want to let you know that I’ve been carrying this for many years. You bullied me throughout middle school. You ruined my middle school years and really traumatized me.”

I often hear a common story when parents call me to discuss a child they are struggling with. They can usually reminisce and think back to fifth or sixth grade, when the relationship was less challenging and more positive. Now the child is in ninth or tenth grade, and the relationship has regressed. It feels distant, complicated, and tense.

When things are difficult, we need to look at our options. We need to take a breath and give ourselves a sense of empowerment. We are better than our child at complex thinking and problem solving, better at compartmentalizing, and better at navigating what it might take to repair the relationship. Our kids, as much as they crave a good relationship – and I promise you they do – don’t have the bandwidth or the tools to piece it back together and lead the way. As parents, we need to embrace the responsibility that we are the ones who can help move the relationship back to a healthier direction.

The typical situation may look familiar. You have a child you are struggling with. They are not getting up in the morning. They are not meeting expectations. They are not helping around the house. They do not get along with siblings. You are fighting with them. Once in a while, you try to talk and it goes well, but then everything blows up again. There may be consequences, threats, and frustration, and the child spends a lot of time alone in their room. It usually turns into a vicious cycle, and nothing seems to consistently help. At that point, we need to slow down and figure out what is going on and how to help.

From years of working with adolescents, one truth has become very clear to me: One of the most impactful factors in an adolescent’s life, mental health, values, and decisions is the relationship they have with their parents. That relationship can serve as an anchor in a very complicated adolescent world, something I have referenced many times throughout my book Parenting with a Plan, where I expand on the ideas of respect-based and relationship-based parenting.

At the same time, I want to make a point that I hope offers both chizuk and perspective. Even when a relationship with a child is genuinely strong, healthy, honest, respectful, and deeply woven into the parent-child dynamic, there are still other factors that can weaken that protective barrier the relationship has built.

After more than 20 years of living “out of town” and working closely with adolescents and their families, and after tens – if not hundreds of thousands – of conversations with teens and parents through school counseling, nationwide phone calls, and private practice, I can honestly say that I have encountered the full spectrum of mental health realities. But if I pinpoint what I have found to be the single biggest impact, the most important variable in the equation of adolescent mental health and adolescent thriving, it is the ever evolving and deeply unique parent-child relationship.

I am not trying to oversimplify complex situations. I am not trying to place a bandage on larger and broader realities. But I can say, with the full weight of my experience, that the parent-child relationship is the most impactful and meaningful relationship in a child’s life, and even in the most difficult times, it is the relationship children continue to crave.

This article is a brief summary of a few of the themes that I explore more deeply in my upcoming book, Parenting with a Plan, where I discuss the power of relationship- and respect-based parenting, and how the quality of the parent-child connection affects a wide cross section of adolescent life. I want to focus on the basics, and especially on how the parent-child relationship shapes two areas that come up again and again with teenagers: friends and peer pressure.