Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.   Robert A Heinlein Oh being a parent is not for the faint of heart.  Can I get an "amen"?!  And part of being a parent is that torn feeling.  Torn between sheltering them from everything bad and hard and between letting them go a bit on their own so they can learn and grow into responsible humans.  I understand that bubble we want to create around our kids.  I experienced it just today as I dropped the youngest off for her first day of middle school in a school roughly 10 times bigger than what she is used to.  I could have walked her all the way to the gym, I wanted to walk her all the way to the gym and then sit with her and make sure that someone talked to her and she was okay and and and.... But that would have been the easy thing to do.  And in the long run it would have ended up being her handicap rather than what she needs.  So I stopped at a certain point in the building ...