You should never be friends with your kids!

I’ve heard many family members and friends utter the phrase “ You should never be friends with your kids”. If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that I tend to ponder these “parenting wisdom’s” instead of blindly accepting them. I started to ask myself “well why not?” What does this really mean to me?

 

I started to consider what it means to be friends with someone. Aren’t your friends the people you trust and depend on? Won’t your REAL friends tell you the truth whether you want to hear it or not? Aren’t they the people you turn to? Im not so sure you should never be friends with your kids.

 

I also often hear adults and kids alike talking about “finding their people”. In fact we recently watched a movie entitled “the Mitchell’s vs the machines” where the main characters focus (before having to save the world) was finding her “people”. Others that understood her drive and vision for her life.

 

Can you be friends with your kids?

What if your family were your people? What if your family were the type of friends that understood and supported you?

 

There seems to persist for many this adversarial approach to parenting. Thats why I believe parents can be selfish This notion that our kids are out to manipulate us. I myself used to believe that I had to “win” every interaction. I’ve heard myself and other parents say “if you’re in it, win it!” I now personally think that’s an obnoxious approach to interacting with someone who just wants to be loved unconditionally for who they are. If I treated my friends that way I wouldn’t have any. 

 

So I’ll ask again can you be friends with your kids? What if you were a good friend? What I mean by that is the kind of friend who tells you what you might need to hear instead of always telling you what you want to hear. The kind of friend you can rely on for help. Whether you need to vent, cry, or just have fun. Perhaps we shouldn’t be shitty friends to our kids. The kind that yell and scream and demand, the kind that let us do whatever we want with no regard for the consequences.

 

What if our kids felt the same trust in us as they do in a close friend knowing we had their back? What if we as their parents were their “people”? How might their future relationships with us and other people look if they experience unconditional love and friendship from the start?

 

I hope this helps

 

Happy Dadding everyone!