Your child is not your friend

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Parenting involves basically two roles, the emotional role and the functional. The emotional role is built on love and affection.

The functional role is being physically present for the child and providing for their physical needs. Indeed, much of the parenting role is functional. We are there as parents to feed, change diapers and bath an infant and ensuring homework gets done for the child in junior school. For the teenager, it means setting and enforcing a responsible curfew and setting basic rules of family function. To maintain a balance of these two critical roles there is need to remember that your child is not your friend.

Naturally a parent wants to feel emotionally attached to their child, but at the same time, the parent must do functional things that the child may not like. Parents need to set limits with their child, and children may dislike the parent and in certain cases may resist the limits set.

That list of the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ is very necessary for the growth of the child. Setting limits is a healthy function, and must be done for the child’s sake. Limits are how kids learn to figure out what’s safe and what’s not safe and what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate. As a parent you are your child’s authority and that’s your role and responsibility. If you try to be friends with your child, it comes at the cost of your authority, undermining your role as a parent.

If you want to be a super dad or super mom who is friends with their child, always loved by the child, saying “yes” to everything the child says, sooner or later you will regret. You are actually creating your own monster that will harm you in the future. We have parents who don’t want to see a child cry because they have not been given what they want or they have not been allowed to go where ever they want to go. If you are one of those parents you are heading for a parenting disaster.

Children have to learn that the word ‘no’ is part of their parent’s vocabulary and when “no’” comes it is not negotiable. Some parents will say “no” and when they see the tears of the child they give in to their demands. As a parent crying must not bother you an inch if you have said “no”. A “no” must always remain a “no”. When some of us grew up in the 70’s and 80’s if a parent said ‘no” and you cried, you were beaten thoroughly for crying and you would then cry double. Even if you got a ‘no’ and you showed that you were upset or angered by the ‘no’ you were beaten again.

Being beaten was part and parcel of our day-to-day life. Today we have parents who cannot spank their child. I support spanking of children at home and at school. I know some parents don’t. Even the Holy book in Proverbs 13 vs 24 says, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’. During my days as a teacher, I saw some parents especially the young ones, coming to confront teachers and school authorities complaining that their child received corporal punishment.

I witnessed an unfortunate scene of a lady parent who came to school and swore at a teacher saying, “You don’t touch my child, if you want to beat a child, go and beat yours.”. This was very unfortunate.

Parents have to be reminded that after swearing at the teacher you leave your child with the same teacher. When you have left the school, do you think the teacher will smile at your child and teach them effectively. So, parents don’t destroy the good relationships between your child and their teacher just because you want to please your child friend to the extent of ‘attacking’ teachers to supposedly please and protect your child.

Teachers are human they also make errors and if a parent thinks a teacher is in error, they should keep that to themselves and their peers and deal with the school directly. Practically speaking, your child can change friends when they see it fit, but your child can not 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.

Some parents often make the mistake of making their child their confidant. You share with the child how you feel about their mother or father or how you feel about their sibling, your neighbour or their teacher. Making a child your confidant doesn’t work because the child is not morally, emotionally or intellectually prepared to play that role.

When a child is your confidant, they become your peer. When they become your peer, this is when you are talking sensitive issues with another adult or your spouse, your child interjects and makes a contribution because you have raised them to that level.

Some years ago, a lady friend said she was sharing with a neighbour over the fence that their other neighbour had given birth to a healthy baby boy and the child who was next to them, listening said he hoped the baby was fathered by the man of that house.

Clearly this lady had confided serious community gossip to her child friend. This is exactly what happens when the child has become your friend.

As a parent you can share some things with a child without necessarily turning them into a confidant. You need to be careful though. When you are financially constrained you can share with a child.

You can be honest with a child, “We can’t afford that.” It’s a factual statement that explains the financial limits under which you are in. You however cannot say to a child, “I don’t know where I’m going to get your fees this term.” That is something your child is not prepared for emotionally.

Children have enough fears and anxieties of their own to deal with. Don’t use your child as a confidant to share your problems. Where you will get the fees is not the child’s business, the child just wants to go to school when school opens.

The dilemma of where you will get fees you can share with your spouse or an adult friend.

Some parents will often overcompensate for problems in their own childhood. For example, a parent who was wild and out-of-control as a child, may be overly strict with their child because they don’t want their child to take the same risks and make the same mistakes that they did.

Likewise, a parent who was raised in an overly strict household, may be overly lenient with their child. This overcompensating is referred to as reaction formation by psychologists. In reaction to how you were parented as a child, you may form a way of parenting that’s not healthy for your child.

Some parents whose emotional needs weren’t met, may overcompensate by trying to be their child’s friend and in the process be overinvolved with the child forming unhealthy parent/child boundaries where the child does not respect the authority of the parent. You cannot as a parent fix your childhood through your child.

The goal of parenting, some parents do not realise, is that we graduate our toddlers to teenagers and adolescents and eventually they leave home and lead their own lives of their own choice. Successful parenting ensures that at some point children separate from their parents. In psychology, we call this individuation. Individuation refers to the process through which a person achieves a sense of individuality separate from the identities of others.

Individuation is natural and healthy. It means your teen child will want to have a life separate from you. It’s how she becomes an individual and she 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. People who fail to individuate from their parents end up with emotional and social problems and they often don’t leave home.

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.

Children and adults have different notions about what they need to do and about right and wrong. They have different priorities. That is appropriate and to be expected. It is however not a recipe for friendship. If you try to make it a friendship, it causes unnecessary conflict and angst. You need to be a responsible parent who loves their child and at the same time, holds their child accountable.This is effective parenting.