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[quote=Anonymous]I don't know if this is helpful, but having a third kid forced me to stop doing this.

When I had two, I really felt "in" whatever they were feeling. They were little, so it was things like "I fell and scraped my knee" or "Larlo is being mean to me" but if my kid was crying, I was there with them (not crying, obviously, but unhappy). Once I had a third, this became exhausting, and I had to actively detach. I realized that if I let myself live by the "you're only has happy as your least happy child" mantra, with three kids, I was going to be unhappy 4x as much as everyone else (my own unhappiness and three kids worth of unhappiness) and that was both unhelpful and a path to a lot of misery.

I realized that I could be there for my kids without actually feeling their emotions. It took active practice, but I got better at it. And practicing when they were little and it was the little stuff helped build that muscle as they got older and their problems became more real. Would be a much harder adjustment at this stage.

If sh*t gets real-real, it won't help, for sure, but boy trouble? This is a phase of life. Yup, she's going to get hurt. Expect it, accept it, AND recognize that this is a GOOD thing. It's how she learns. Do you know anyone who hit 40 without some heartbreak? I don't. And, in fact, the person I know who didn't start dating until her 30s went through all this for the first time then and I'd say it was harder. You don't want that for your kid. If you can re-brand this in your head as an important learning experience for her no matter the outcome, that might help you detach (although lord knows you shouldn't say anything like that to her!)[/quote]

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