Recently, a mom posted on Facebook how she was best friends with her teenage daughter. Does reading that sentence give you pause at all? It should. The definition of parent does not include best friend.
Think back to your best friend in high school. She was probably the person you trusted most. You told her all your secrets. Who you were crushing on. Which girl in your class you absolutely despised. How much you hated your parents because they didn’t understand you. We want that as parents, right? We want our children to tell us everything and trust us with their deepest, darkest secrets. But, think about why you needed that best friend. You needed her because you knew if you told your parents all those things, they would try to persuade you in one direction or another or, Heaven forbid, try to turn it into a “teachable” moment. In fact, your best friend may have given you some of the worst advice ever! We didn’t go to our parents for everything because they couldn’t and shouldn’t have provided everything. If a parent abdicates common sense with their children in the name of popularity, it sets everyone up for failure. Here are some common jobs of parents that often get forfeited because parents want to be liked by their kids:
- It’s a parents’ job to police the length of their daughter’s hemline, depth of her neckline, and amount of make-up. If they don’t, we have girls who go to the eighth grade dance looking like they are headed out to their 21st birthday party.
- It’s dad’s job to be sure his daughter knows what to expect out of a gentleman on a date, when she is ready to date.
- It’s dad’s job to be sure his son knows how to treat a young lady (and elder ladies for that matter) with respect (can be modeled by the way dad treats his wife) and not encourage behavior that objectifies women (coarse, dirty jokes, pornography, demeaning his mother in front of his son).
- It’s mom’s job to teach her son how to treat a woman by encouraging him to be considerate (remind him to open doors, offer his seat in a crowded bus, train, or waiting room to an elder or a woman).
- It’s mom’s job to teach her daughter how to behave like a lady in the presence of gentlemen. This means no coarse talk or jokes, manners, and what to avoid that may give a young man the wrong impression about what the young lady is or isn’t willing to do.
Parents have a responsibility to their children to be the adults. If you’re an adult, you know this means that your job is not always fun. It also means you won’t always be the most popular person, because doing the right thing is not always the most popular thing. However, many times doing the right thing now will help to avoid wrong turns in the future.
Does this mean we shouldn’t be approachable? Does this mean we can’t have a good time with our kids? Absolutely not! In fact, just the opposite. We have to be approachable. While we know that our kids, most likely, will not tell us everything, we want to try to create an environment and relationship with our kids in which they could feel free to tell us everything. We also want to have fun with our kids. Odds are when you gather with your parents and siblings and talk about fond memories growing up, many of those memories involve laughing until your sides ache and cheeks hurt. Having fun with our kids is one of the quickest ways to solidify your caring relationship with them and being approachable.
The key is not to sacrifice your role as parent trying to be a friend. Our kids will have plenty of friends. They only have two parents. And, they need those parents to parent effectively. Once they are grown and on their own, there will be plenty of time to be friends.