Though I’m not yet a parent, I can imagine how difficult it must be to see your child hurt in any way. I do think, though, there’s a difference between physical and emotional hurt. It’s not that emotional hurt is any less damaging… indeed, I’m betting it can be even more damaging over the long run. But I can see how, as a parent, there might be a need to intervene immediately when another child physically harms one’s own child (or when one’s child harms another child!), whereas the emotional hurt issue should probably be dealt with differently depending on the circumstances (was this a one-time hurtful comment or is it part of a pattern of emotional hurt or even bullying?).

I also think it’s important to teach children how to deal with being hurt, either physically or emotionally (not that I know exactly how to do this!). You mentioned the spectrum of responses: to “shield” our children or to let them experience the “full glory” of pain. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess, as with many things in life, there’s a middle ground that’s unique for each parent and child. Ideally, it would be great to let our kids know that we support them but that we won’t always be there for them and that they have to learn how to handle pain on their own.

Obviously, though, the way we teach them this has a lot to do with where they are developmentally. The lessons in independence we teach our infants and toddlers (say, how to begin to move without our aid) are so different from the lessons in independence we teach our children (how to work with others while learning about the world) and our adolescents (how to function in society as an adult). Each of these stages require some amount of pain and some amount of support to allow the child to learn and to flourish. The “some amount” has to change as the child changes. This, ultimately, must be one of the most difficult parts of parenting: we start with the infants who need us for just about everything, but so much of our job is to allow them gradually to stop needing us.