Some children thrive in the playground and make friends easily. For other kids, friendships are tricky to navigate.

When your child comes home sad about the fact that no one played with them today, or that someone was unkind to them, we feel their pain viscerally and it can feel like our own heart might just break in two.

The thought of our kids feeling left out or hurt emotionally without anyone there to help them can light a fire under us. We want to jump into action - call the school, drill our kid to find out the names of the kids who did this, or dive into a monologue of advice about ‘playing with someone else’.

While these responses come from a place of love and protectiveness for our child, they are often more about how we are feeling than our kid.

The truth is all kids will have days where things don’t go right in the playground and not all of these struggles need a parent to intervene. But what point do you step in, and what should you do to support your...