Parents struggle with all sorts of child-rearing difficulties. It comes with a package. How parents respond to those struggles sets their children on paths they will follow into adulthood. So it is imperative that parents understand exactly what is going on.
To that end, here is the number one parenting truth every mother and father needs to embrace from the get-go: you are not their friend. Your children have friends in school. They have friends in the neighborhood. They might even consider their cousins to be friends. You are not on that list.
Wanting to be your child’s friend is normal. Giving into that desire is dangerous. While your children are still living in your home, be a parent. You will have plenty of time to be their friend after they grow up and have kids of their own.
 Children Lack Knowledge and Experience
The biggest trap of being your child’s friend is treating them as equal. Like or not, children are only equal to their parents in the sense that all are human beings. It goes no further than that.
Your child is not equal to you for the simple fact that they lack knowledge and experience. At two years old, your child knows nothing. Furthermore, they do not know what they do know. They also do not know how to go out and learn.
A young child lacks the experience required to know that stoves are hot, knives are sharp, and chasing a ball into the street is dangerous. They lack the experience to know that throwing tantrums in public is not acceptable. They do not realize that playing the same whining game as a wife and a mother could quite possibly ruin her future marriage.
Children Need Training
If you were to take your child to Relationships & More for adolescent counseling, you might discover something surprising: children need training. As a Rye, NY clinic offering adolescent counseling, Relationships & More sees their fair share of parent-child difficulties. Their therapists say a lack of training is often the culprit.
If you wanted to be a pro athlete, wouldn’t you expect to have to go through extensive training first? Likewise, you would expect years and years of training ahead of competing in the Olympics. Training isn’t a bad thing. It is a good and necessary thing.
Likewise, Relationships & More compares raising children to training them for adult life. That training involves structure, discipline, and constant learning. Like training for the Olympics, child training cannot be done haphazardly and still reap the desired results.
 Children Want to Be in Control
The fact of the matter is that children resist training. Why? Because they want to be in control. Giving them that control is simply unwise. Again, they don’t know what they don’t know. Allowing them to be in control of their own lives invites disaster, especially when children are young.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what parents do when they try to be friends instead of parents. A father who wants to be his child’s friend is likely to be soft on discipline. A mother hoping to be her daughter’s friend may be unwilling to prevent the child from engaging in destructive behaviors.
Being your child’s friend is certainly easier than being a parent. There is less friction that way. But too often, the result is more painful than the experience of being a parent. You end up trading a happy home when the kids are young for the pain of watching them go astray as adults. It is not worth it.
Be your child’s parent. Let their friends be their friends.
