Appealing to People's' Desire to Want to Do the Same Thing as Their Friends or Family

The emotional role of the parent is built on dear, affection, and esteem. It's an essential function of existence a parent, and it's a cute thing to behold. But your role equally a parent is non only emotional. And your kid is non your friend.

Indeed, much of the parenting role is functional. For an infant, that ways feeding, changing diapers, bathing, and generally providing for the child. For an 8-year-old, information technology ways ensuring homework gets washed. And for a fifteen-year-former, it means setting and enforcing a responsible curfew.

Sympathize that if a female parent loves her kid emotionally but neglects the functional role, that child is at risk of non maturing into a responsible adult. Indeed, emotional and functional parenting roles get hand in hand. It'southward not healthy to emphasize ane at the cost of the other. You demand both.

Parents besides need to understand that the amount of emotional versus functional requirements changes over fourth dimension. As a child gets older, the parent needs to take on more of a functional role and less of an emotional ane considering the goal for older kids is to prepare them to live without y'all.

Your Child May Non Like Your Functional Role

A parent may want to experience emotionally attached to their older kid, but at the same time, the parent must do functional things that the child may not similar. For case, parents need to fix limits with their child, and your child may dislike yous and may resist you when you set limits.

Nonetheless, setting limits is a healthy function, and you demand to do it for your child'south sake. Limits are how kids learn to effigy out what'due south safe and what'south not safe. And what's appropriate and what's not appropriate.

You are your child's dominance—that's your function and responsibleness. Do you lot take an emotional human relationship with your child? Yeah. Simply if y'all try to be friends with your kid, it comes at the cost of your authority, and it undermines your role every bit a parent.

Practically speaking, your child can find another friend, but your child can't find some other parent. You and just you can be your kid'due south parent, and that'due south why you demand to be the parent and non the friend.

And if it'southward you who needs a friend, I suggest you await elsewhere and don't wait your kid to be your friend.

Don't Brand Your Child Your Confidant

I think parents often make the mistake of making their child their confidant. And then when they say, "I want to be his friend, and I want him to be my friend," what they're saying is, "I want to be his confidant." And that just does not fit with the functional role of a parent.

It'due south a very well-meaning trap that parents autumn into. They want to share with the kid how they feel about their grandmother, for example. Or how they feel about their neighbor. Or how they feel about their teacher. But it's ineffective because the child is not morally, emotionally, or intellectually prepared to play that role.

If you're forty years old and you desire a confidant, find some other forty-year-old. Or a fifty-year-old. Or a thirty-year-old. Just know that your fifteen- or 10-year-onetime kid tin can't be your confidant.

Don't Criticize Your Child's School or Instructor In Front of Him

If parents call back teachers are in mistake, they should keep that to themselves and their peers and deal with the school direct. Be conscientious what y'all say to your child virtually it.

For example, if you think the teacher's a jerk for not letting your child chew mucilage, don't say so to your child. Instead, say:

"Male child, I disliked that rule when I was in school too. Merely I had to follow the rules."

Calling the instructor a jerk in front of your child makes your child your confidant, and that's ineffective parenting.

Remember this: if you lot make your kid your confidant and disrespect say-so figures in front of him, don't be surprised when he disrespects that authority effigy. Or when he disrespects yous. And and so if you give him consequences for that disrespect, he's going to look at you lot as a hypocrite.

When y'all make your child your confidant, yous are saying that you lot and the child are co-determination makers. But you and your child are non co-conclusion makers in any realistic way. Kids tin offer you their opinion. They can tell you what they like and dislike. Just certain decisions—particularly important ones—have to be made by you lot, the parent.

At the end of the twenty-four hours, kids need to empathise that the family acts as a unit, and the adults are responsible for the decisions.

Don't Share Too Much With Your Child

I think yous tin can share some things with a child without turning him into a confidant. Simply y'all take to be careful.

One of the things you can share with a child is the statement, "We can't afford that." It's a factual statement that explains the fiscal limits under which you must alive.

But, what you shouldn't share with the kid is, "I don't know how I'thousand going to pay the hire this month." That'southward something your child is not prepared for emotionally. It makes him anxious about something over which he has no control. It'south unhealthy for him.

Kids have enough fright and anxiety of their own to bargain with. Don't use your child every bit a confidant to share your problems. Instead, utilize your spouse or an adult friend. That'south more effective and appropriate.

So I call up that you need to be a parent to your kid and be loving, caring, and responsible. Just find your confidants elsewhere.

Adults and Children Accept Different Notions Nearly Life

If you lot tend to treat your child as a "friend," y'all should understand this about friendship: friends are a group of people who have similar notions and ideas about life. That's not you and your child.

The truth is, children and adults accept quite different notions near what they need to do. They have different notions almost right and wrong. And they have different priorities. That'south appropriate and to be expected. But that'due south not a recipe for friendship. And if yous try to make it a friendship, it causes unnecessary disharmonize and angst.

Leave Your Personal History Out of Your Parenting

Parents will often overcompensate for problems they recall in their own childhood. For instance, if you lot were wild and out-of-control, yous may be overly strict with your kid considering you don't want your kid to take the same risks and make the aforementioned mistakes that you did.

Likewise, if you were raised in an overly strict household, yous may be overly lenient with your child.

This overcompensating is referred to as reaction formation by psychologists. In reaction to how you lot were parented as a kid, you lot class a manner of parenting that's non healthy for your child.

For example, if your emotional needs weren't met, you may overcompensate by trying to be your child's friend and by smothering your child with attending and affection. And that may accept harmful unintended consequences.

Indeed, you may retrieve your child volition similar you more if y'all're his friend. You may retrieve he'll trust yous more. But here'due south the problem. He may not respect your authority equally a issue. He may non mind to the word "no" because you lot never used information technology with him or taught him how to deal with it. He may not fifty-fifty want you as a friend. When I was a teen, I sure didn't want to hang out with my parents, and that's okay.

In the end, you lot can't set your childhood through your child.

The Goal of Boyhood is for Kids to Split From Their Parents

The goal of adolescence is for kids to split from their parents. In psychology, nosotros call this individuation. Individuation refers to the procedure through which a person achieves a sense of individuality divide from the identities of others.

Individuation is salubrious. Information technology means your teen child will desire to have a life carve up from you lot. Information technology's how she becomes an individual. And, every bit a issue, she may not want to share her life with you the manner that she did in the past.

Empathize that your child needs to separate from you to become independent. Yous may not always corroborate of her friends and values, but information technology'southward 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 dwelling house.

Many parents encounter this individuation happening in their adolescent children and feel abandoned by their child. This feeling of abandonment is specially true when they have parented too much in the emotional role and have acted as their child's friend. They feel a remarkable sense of loss, and they often compensate for it by blaming the child.

How to Stop Existence Your Kid's Confidant

If you've shared too much with your child and have not set the kind of limits they demand, all in the name of being your child's friend, you can change to become a more than constructive parent. It begins by explaining to your child what yous're going to talk almost from at present on. You can say:

"I've decided that at that place are some things I should exist talking to other adults nigh. So I'm non going to talk to you near them anymore because I think it hurts our human relationship."

You don't have to exist specific about the discipline matter. Just be clear.

And then you need to learn how to reply differently to your child. For instance, if y'all and your child take been talking about what a wiggle a particular instructor is for weeks and the child brings it upwardly once more and then say to your child:

"You lot know, I've been thinking that it doesn't help yous to label your teacher a jerk. Let'south figure out how y'all can handle this state of affairs successfully."

It'south normal for friends to sit down around and bad-mouth their teachers. It's what they do. But a responsible parent will aid their child solve the problem he'southward having with the teacher. And that's what you need to practice.

Divorced and Unmarried Parents

In divorced families, each parent may try to exist the child's confidant, and the child gets stuck painfully in the middle. The female parent'due south telling him what his father's like, what he'due south doing, and non doing. And the father's telling him what his mom's like, how she'southward crazy, and how she's controlling.

I've heard kids in divorced families complain that their mom is "and then controlling, she's awful. I can't live with her." Likewise oft, they were just repeating what their begetter said to them.

The problem is that the complaints may be valid to some degree. And at present the kid can see it. But he can't react to information technology accordingly because he doesn't have the maturity to do so. It'south not right to put your child in that position.

Act Like the Responsible Adult Your Kid Needs

I want to make an important point for you here. In the end, you tin be friendly with your child. That's a beautiful thing. But not at the expense of beingness their parent.

The cardinal is to take a responsible relationship with your kid. Responsible adults don't let their children skip their homework. They don't permit their children make excuses for failure. They don't bad-oral fissure the teachers. That's the type of human relationship you demand to have with your child. It'south called being a responsible adult—an developed who loves their child and, at the aforementioned fourth dimension, holds their child accountable. Information technology's called effective parenting.

Related Content: Grandparents and Parents Disagreeing? eleven Tips for Both of You

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Source: https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/your-child-is-not-your-friend/