Reply to If you have a great relationship with your mom, how was your childhood?

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[quote=Anonymous]Ooops, me again ^^ forgot a key thing:  parents should NOT be their children's BFFs.  No, no and no.  A great parent-child relationship will have fun, and easy times, and be joyous, but you canNOT overlook problematic behavior because you are worried you'll offend or drive away your child.  You are a parent first, and good parents cannot lose sight of that.

As I said above I have worked in child welfare for 15+ years.  I have seen parents who prefer to be their kids' BFF (sometimes becuase the parent is young, sometimes because they just hate for people - even their own kids - to be mad at them).  I was just talking to an adult cousin of mine about another cousin and his 19 yr old daughter, who he's always tried to be BFFs with.  And she is a wreck, no ambition, has a social life no one knows anything about... still lives at home, is hugely disrespectful and abusive to everyone, and expects everyone to take care of her.

In other words, he has only done damage by "parenting by being friends", because now he's realizing how much he set her up to be irresponsible.

Sometimes being a parent (especially a mom!) can be so thankless, even for years it can feel thankless.  It seems unfair that we might be old or gone before our kids really understand why we did what we did and appreciate it, but so it must be.  We have to raise the most self-sufficient, kind, healthy, sane kids we can, and if we can have a good time and play with them as we do it, so much the better.  But it's often an un-fun job.  Although... the better we do it from early on, the more fun it is![/quote]

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