The girl perched atop the huge iron anchor in our neighborhood park looked about 6 or 7. My 3-year-old son, jumping up to scale the structure, brushed her dangling foot with his head.

“Shoo, shoo,” the girl shouted, kicking out her foot.

Standing near my son, I felt a sudden flash of anger. “Use your words to ask him to move,” I snapped. “He’s not a cat.”

My response was sharp and loud enough to elicit an apology from the girl’s nanny and a look of embarrassment from my husband and my older son.

Yes, I’m a helicopter parent. I won’t shy away from the label. I read my 9-year-old’s books (the Lemony Snicket series right now), watch television with him (“The Suite Life of Zach and Cody”), and check his homework. When he has a test, I help him study (I now know what kinds of clouds accompany cold and warm fronts). I’ve been a room parent since kindergarten. My younger boy goes to a cooperative preschool where I volunteer with the other helicopter moms in the classroom every month.

I could go overboard if I’m not careful, but Lori Drew’s example should make everyone pause. The 48-year-old mother from Dardenne, Mo., took the notion of parent involvement to a sickening extreme. Incensed that a 13-year-old girl had abruptly broken off her friendship with her daughter, Drew invented an imaginary boyfriend through a fake MySpace account, according to the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/28hoax.html?_r=1&oref=slogin).

The “boyfriend” wooed the girl online for several weeks before turning on her, sending her cruel messages and telling her “The world would be a better place without you.” The eighth-grade girl, who’d been battling weight problems and depression, hanged herself in her bedroom closet.

I grew up in the 1970s, and I’m not nostalgic for the days when most adults, including educators, believed bullying was a problem children needed to solve among themselves. I witnessed, and was the victim of, many acts of cruelty that children perpetrate on each other. Teachers and other adults shrugged their shoulders and looked the other way.

I wrote an article in ASBJ about bullying nearly a decade ago and was pleased to discover that the prevailing attitudes had changed. Now, most educators, child advocates, and mental health professionals say that adults can and should intervene. And that’s especially true now that bullies are equipped with high-tech tools – cell phones, texting devices, and social networking accounts.

Many bullied children are set up to be victims by their families long before they get to school. I don’t hover around my boys at the playground. But if I see someone bigger or stronger harming my preschooler (yes, that includes a little girl trying to kick him in the head), I’ll intervene. I want my boys to know I’ll protect them.

But what to say about a woman whose warped sense of maternal protection drove her to the prolonged torment of a troubled eighth-grader? There are no words.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor