"When your child comes home from school with tales of mean girls, aggressive boys and insensitive teachers, you feel for her, and often you let it show, but maybe you shouldn’t."

"Our kids feed off our emotions and get more distressed when we’re distressed. When my daughter communicates her worries to me, only to have me start worrying too, it definitely makes things worse. She needs me to be strong, but instead I inadvertently send the message that anxiety is the ‘right’ reaction to her problems."

From a WaPo article titled "6 ways good parents contribute to their child’s anxiety."

So after years of cranking up our sensitivity to bullying, it's time to deescalate. How about self-esteem? We overdoing that too? Yes. That's another of the problems found in the "good parents" — which seems to mean the parents who've responded to the mainstream media advice of the last X years:

When you constantly tell people your son is on track for a top college, or your daughter is going to be an Olympic gymnast, you feel like you’re building them up, but eventually the positive affirmation turns to pressure. Compliment your kids when they excel, but don’t make their excellence a reason to expect even more from them. Overly high expectations can create performance anxiety where there used to be joy and personal fulfillment.

The hard part is picking the exact right time to stop listening to advice. Or go back to Dr. Spock's page 1 meta-advice: "TRUST YOURSELF. You know more than you think you do.... Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense. Bringing up your child won't be a complicated job if you take it easy and trust your own instincts...."