07/09/2020
Do you want to be a parent or a friend to your child?
Parents have 2 main roles to play in the lives of their children. One is the emotional role which is love, affection, and esteem which is an essential part of being a parent, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.
The other is the functional role, where the parenting role is functional. For an infant, that means feeding, changing diapers, for an eight-year-old, it means ensuring homework gets done, so on and so forth.
What if a mother loves her child emotionally but neglects the functional role, that child is at risk of not maturing into a responsible adult. Therefore, emotional and functional parenting roles go hand in hand.
When a child grows up into a teen a parent gets confused about whether to be their friend or remain a parent.
Its often-seen parents make the mistake of becoming a friend (taking the emotional role forward as against the functional role) to their teen, which comes at the cost of their authority, and it undermines the role of a parent. When limits are set, the child may not approve of it and show displeasure. This may not go well with the parent and so may fall into the trap of playing the emotional role.
Practically speaking, your child can find another friend, but your child can’t find another parent. You and only you can be your child’s parent, and that’s why you need to be the parent and not the friend.
Another mistake a parent does is to make their teen a confidant. Sharing about family members, neighbors, teachers, and expecting a response from them may not be good, for the simple reason that the child is not morally, emotionally, or intellectually prepared to play that role and respond accordingly.
Friends are a group of people who have similar notions and ideas about life. And strangely a parent and child do not share the same. They have different notions about right and wrong. And they have different priorities. That’s appropriate and to be expected. But that’s not a recipe for friendship. And if you try to make it a friendship, it causes unnecessary conflict and anger.
Adolescence comes with individuation (a process through which a person achieves a sense of individuality separate from the identities of others). Individuation is healthy. It means your teen child will want to have a life separate from you and may not want to share her life with you the way that she did in the past. You may not always approve of her friends and values, but it’s your child’s job to work through that. Many parents see this individuation happening in their adolescent children and feel abandoned by their child. This feeling of abandonment is especially true when they have parented too much in the emotional role and have acted as their child’s friend.
I would end hereby only saying, you can be friendly to your child but not at the expense of being their parent. Rather be a responsible parent who loves their child and at the same time holds their child accountable.
These were my views, please share your views, and let's discuss it further!
