Should parents treat children as equals? Or should they let them not forget who calls the shots? Or should they be friend, philosopher and guide, all rolled into one?
If you're like me, as you weigh the ins and outs of decisions regarding your child, as you consider the pros of this, the cons of that, there is often a little what-if at the back of your mind.
What if he doesn't like me?
It's not a worry, exactly, not really even a concern. In fact, when you finally examine it closely, you realise it's not even a question, but a prayer: I hope he likes me. I hope we'll be friends.
Mention this to a psychologist and here's what he'll probably tell you: Put a lid on it. Parent as friend, it turns out, is a tricky concept. Not only is it hard to pull off, but it can put a child at risk even though that is the last thing you intend.
For baby boomer parents who are ambivalent about authority, for single parents struggling to make ends meet, for working couples pressed for time, this is not what we want to hear.
"Because time is limited, because we grew up in the '60s or '70s, parents today are uncomfortable with a status that sets them apart and above. We want equal, we want fun, especially if there's only two hours a day to spend with your kid," says psychologist Larry Steinberg, a professor of human development at Temple University.
Nobody, certainly not Steinberg, is saying we can't have fun with our children; we can and we should. What causes trouble is when being a friend comes at the expense of being a parent.
"It's OK to be friendly," says developmental psychologist and researcher E. Mark Cummings of Notre Dame University. "It's OK to embrace the best characteristic of friendship - respectfulness - and to be sympathetic and supportive. It's OK to wrestle together, go to a movie, play in the sand."
What's not OK, he says, is to cross the line and become an equal, to place inappropriate decision making in a child's lap, to be lax in discipline or inconsistent in limit-setting. That's because children of all ages feel most safe and secure when parents provide guidance and set limits. "They need to feel there is someone smarter and stronger taking care of them," says Steinberg. "When they don't, it creates an unsettling feeling" that can lead to clinical problems.
Steinberg is author of You and Your Adolescent: A Parent's Guide for Ages 10 to 20. In one sense at least, parent as friend is no different from any of the many other roles we slip in and out of all day long.
The natural role of the parent as the person in charge is what distinguishes parent from friend, says psychologist Gloria Jurkowitz. "In a friendship, two people are on an equal playing field. That is never the case with parent and child," she says. "Any age child knows that distinction, expects it, and wants it." Jurkowitz leads parenting groups and is in private practice.
This is less an issue with toddlers and pre-schoolers. If a three-year-old hits the parent/playmate on the head with a block, few would have difficulty sliding back into the parent/teacher role: "That's no! Blocks are for building, not for hitting."
The older children get, however,the more a friendship can blur the boundary. What parent hasn't felt slighted when a school-age child drops you like a hot potato for a classmate who phones to play? That's a hurt we need to learn to swallow.
"If we impose our friendship on them too much, we make them feel bad for doing what they are supposed to do: separate from us and develop peer friendships," says Jurkowitz.
This is most difficult in the teen years. Not only does it make some parents squirm to be the force children react against, but many of us see our adolescents as good intellectual company. More than ever though, our job is to know where to draw the line, says Steinberg, who is known for his research on adolescence.
"When I experiment with acting cooler, it bothers my son. He'll say, 'Why don't you act your age, Dad?' It's not that he doesn't like me any more, rather that 11- to 17-year-olds need individuation. If you don't make the boundaries for them, it interferes with their ability to attain the developmental psychological goals of autonomy."
Children most at risk are those whose parents turn to them for friendship during times of depression, separation or divorce: "I'm so lonely, let's go to the movies"; "My bed feels so empty, will you sleep here?" "The house will feel so empty while you're at your father's this weekend." Even though you think you are only stating facts, and even though a child may insist she can handle it, Cummings says this kind of friendship is an unfair burden that typically inhibits a child from getting her own needs met.
"You can talk about your childhood and how you faced certain situations, you can talk about an issue you are having with another adult," he says. "But don't talk about marital problems, or loneliness, or whether to put Grandma in a home. When you turn to a child for support as you would to an adult friend, you impinge on her emotional security."
Jurkowitz cautions, however, that when a teenager says that Mom's her best friend, she generally doesn't mean she has the same relationship with Mom as with her best friend who is a peer. "It means they have a wonderful, accepting relationship that gives security and comfort," she says. "But I bet that teen doesn't talk to her parent in the same way or about the same things that she talks to her best friend who's the same age."That's probably just as well. There are some details we're better off not knowing.
Continue to Mirror Magazine page 2 * Parents as Friends!
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