Dear Grandparenting: I’m beginning to lose faith in my grandchildren’s ability to do the right thing. This marks the second time I’ve heard about how they stood by and did nothing while someone they knew got beaten by bullies. The first time involved my granddaughter, Jana. She froze up when she saw a friend getting slapped around by other girls behind the gym.

Now I’m hearing grandson Tommy took the coward’s way out too. A younger kid was getting picked on after the school bus dropped them off. They tore up his schoolwork, threw his books in a puddle and laughed when he cried. We know his family. He’s a nice kid with a bad stutter. Instead of doing something about it, Tommy ran home and ate a whole bag of cookies. He said he figured someone else would stop it, just like Jana.

That’s not how I was brought up and it’s certainly not how I raised my children. My grandchildren were taught to know right from wrong, but they flunked the test. We all hear a lot about school bullies, but there would be fewer if kids had the courage to step up and give them a taste of their own medicine. I don’t know what’s worse – a bully or a coward. What’s wrong with kids today? George P. Smith, Everett, Washington

Dear George: While we agree with some of your sentiments, there is more to this than meets the eye. According to social scientists that study group dynamics, your grandchildren’s behavior is not uncommon, nor is it confined to children.

This so-called bystander effect has been seen before. In a 1964 horror show, a young woman was stalked, raped and stabbed to death outside her New York City apartment complex in broad daylight as neighbors watched, alerted by her screams.

Subsequent research staged under laboratory conditions revealed that the absence or presence of bystanders influences how individuals respond to a victim situation. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of bystanders. With one bystander, the likelihood the victim gets help is 75 percent. With four bystanders the probability falls to 10 percent, since onlookers assume someone else will act. Grandchildren are more likely to intervene if they’re friends or belong to the same socio-economic group, and less likely when high-status students are involved or the situation is ambiguous.

Instead of consigning your grandchildren to the doghouse, talk to them about the importance of exercising personal responsibility in a group situation. Suppose they were the ones in distress? With some tutelage, they could become the Good Samaritans that grandparents hope for.

GRAND REMARK OF THE WEEK

Web from Reading, Pennsylvania, was exhausted after his shopping expedition to fill his grandchildren’s Christmas wish lists.

“It’s like a day at the office,” he said to wife Mary. “I do all the work and a fat guy in a suit gets the credit.”