All parents have worries about their children. Some are real. Some are imagined. I find that many of mine are somewhere in between the two.

When my family returned from an extended stay in Africa, I was convinced one of the boys had worms. “Don’t be ridiculous,” my close friends all told me.”He’s always been that skinny.”

“It’s going to be hard to tell if he does, or if he doesn’t,” my pediatrician said, “The labs almost always come back positive. So you’ll never really know.”

“Everyone de-worms their children here,” my friend in Cape Town advised. “I’ll send you the medicine.”

I gave him the medicine and he’s still as skinny as ever. I’ll never know if my concern was justified.

When it comes to our children, our worries – whether warranted or not – are always real. They keep us up at night. They settle inside of us in a lingering, disquieting kind of way. Often it is our spouses who help keep them in check, husbands reminding wives and wives reminding husbands that the worries are unfounded or a bit exaggerated.

But I have found a new technique that quickly puts my worries into perspective.

The fastest way to stop worrying about your own children’s problems is to call a friend whose children are five years older than your own brood, and talk about their problems. They will invariably be more complicated and more intractable and in just a few minutes you will appreciate the insignificance of your own worries.

A couple weeks ago, after my husband and I were shut out of all 12 movies at the Lincoln Square theater, we bumped into friends who were killing time before their movie began. After a couple rounds of pomegranate margaritas at Rosa Mexicana, I began to hear of their oldest daughter’s coming and goings on the infamous New York bar and bat mitzvah circuit.

“After the party, the parents of the bar mitzvah boy have invited all the children for a sleepover at the family’s country house. The boys are all sleeping on one floor of the house and the girls are sleeping on another. As if they’re really stay that way. We couldn’t think of worse idea so we said she couldn’t go,” the mother told me.

“She can’t appreciate the complications that could arise in that kind of situation. And of course she’s furious because she feels singled out as one of the only children whose parents won’t let her go. But we both feel that that kind of situation is ripe for disaster.”

Even if I hadn’t just downed two of those margaritas, I’m not so sure I would have had much to add to the conversation. I don’t have a 13-year-old daughter yet. My daughter is 3 years old and the boys in her class are not looking at her that way – either in reality or in my imagination.

I knew enough to applaud them for their decision, but not enough to find a way to actually relate to their concerns.

That night, as I fell asleep not worrying about my children’s issues but instead thinking about theirs, I realized that what I should have done to ease their parental concerns was tell them about another friend of mine whose 20-year-old daughter is now beginning her third year of traveling and working, instead of attending university.

“When she wanted to take a gap year between high school and college it seemed like a great idea,” my friend had told me. “She needed the time to grow up and appreciate all that university offers. But now she is driving us crazy. And the more time that passes, the more we worry if she’ll ever go back to school at all. It’s a nightmare.”

According to my new technique, I should have told this friend about other friends, whose daughter is marrying a man who doesn’t work, despite the fact that he has several children.

“I don’t know what she’s thinking. We’ve told her how we feel, and that’s just about all we can do,” the mother told me.

Misery really does love company, particularly where parenting is concerned. And although hearing about the potential problems your children might face in years to come is daunting, it doesn’t create the gnawing anxiety that is produced by thinking about your children’s current problems, regardless of their severity.

So the next time you’re inclined to analyze your own children’s issues, stop. First, call a friend and hear about the issues you’ll be facing in a few years. By the time you analyze your own, they’ll seem like a walk in the park.