It’s been a busy three weeks, with our 17, 18 and 20 year old sons home for their summer break. At the same time, we’ve enjoyed extended visits with our married children and their families; someone has been here every day except this morning (hence me being able to take the time to share with you).
As usual, I enjoyed conversations with our married children, and as usual, there was food for thought.
One made the comment that I’m much nicer to dd9 than I was to her at that age, and that I was a ‘scary’ mother.
I don’t think ‘scary’ is an accurate term to use, but I agree that I was strict about boundaries. I asked another married child if she perceived me being ‘scary’, and she said that she wouldn’t say that, but I wasn’t their friend. She remembers visiting a friend’s home when the mother was coloring her hair and invited the girls in while she did it, chatting with them. That’s something I never would have done. I wouldn’t have had such relaxed boundaries and treated my children and their friends as my peers.
I saw a quote I completely agree with: “You can be friends with your children when they are children or when they are adults. You cannot be both.”
You have to choose. I didn’t hit my children, yell at them or threaten them, but I was serious about them knowing I meant what I said when I said it. I still am. While I’ve smoothed out how I convey my commitment to following through on what I say and can comfortably hold my boundaries while staying visibly warm and caring, being the obvious adult in the room was a big part of my success as a parent, and I don’t feel apologetic for having a stricter demeanor as a younger mother when I enforced boundaries.
Today’s parenting approach leans toward treating a child as a friend, and there is a real reluctance by parents to impose their judgment out of fear of being seen as ‘controlling’. So instead they give children extensive choices (which creates insecurity) and don’t set those critical boundaries.
If you are friends with your child, you are denying them critical input and guidance, and they will grow into adults you won’t like. Doing your job right as a parent means you’re sometimes going to make your child unhappy, because you’ll need to correct and direct them at times they’d rather do what they want. If you want to have adult children who you genuinely enjoy being around, you’re going to have to do the hard things to help them develop into responsible and considerate adults.
Children need adults to be the adults. They crave those boundaries. In my conversations these last couple of weeks with adult children asking my advice on parenting issues, I stress this: the kids might not outwardly be happy about the boundaries you create, but you must be the parent.
While you can invite their participation in making decisions, you are the leader. A parent runs the home, and a parent should have the final word. A child who isn’t clear about this is a child who will constantly be testing with increasingly oppositional behavior. I made a decision many years ago, that our home would be a place where people learned to be kind to one another, and would act with respect to one another, and I held this line consistently.
Did my children like and appreciate this at the time? Sometimes, but certainly not always.
But now they all appreciate how well they get along, and I have deep enjoyment from my relationships with our adult children, with only a few regrets about the parenting choices I made over the years.
Avivah
4 Responses
I think there is a difference between being your child’s friend and having moments in which the relationship feels like friendship, without any trace of the parent’s authority disappearing.
The feeling of friendship between a parent and child does not usually diminish the difference in their status. Chatting and laughing, going on outings and having deep conversations add color to everyday life. The same child whose father casually pats him on the shoulder does not think for a moment that he can take his father’s place. He and his father may genuinely enjoy spending time together, but he would never think of doing something behind his father’s back.
A father can be, first and foremost, a father and still sometimes feel that his son is like a friend. He may not feel that way, and neither is necessarily more correct than the other. What matters is that it remains clear that the son does not have the same rights and responsibilities as the father.
I think your parenting is very much like this!
This post made me think…I was unfortunately not a fun mom when I was raising my children in the early years. I was still very much struggling with PTSD back then. I also sadly yelled at my kids in the early years. I think I was ok with boundaries and I didn\’t try to be my children\’s friend. Now we are close and loving, b\”H. We do share a friendship, but I\’m still the parent. It\’s just that the role of being the parent to adult children is quite different from the role of being a parent to young children, and that changes as well as they grow from babies to young adults. Kim John Payne calls the different ways we parent different ages/stages of children the Governor-Gardener-Guide roles.
I was thinking about the example your daughter gave, Avivah, of the other mother who invited the girls in to chat with her while she was dying her hair. I wonder if what your daughter was trying to express was that there was a feeling of lightness and fun to that experience. I know it\’s possible, healthy, and connecting to have fun with ones children while still maintaining appropriate roles, and I guess every parent has to be discerning and aware of where each child is holding. Some children might be role-confused by an invitation like that, and others would not, depending on how well they have integrated the concept of appropriate roles, their age, and a variety of other factors. I would not have invited my daughter to that particular activity, but we engaged in a number of similar fun, connecting activities once she reached age 11 or 12, such as tichel tying and experimenting with makeup together, shopping for or creating items for her nedunya, etc.
Isn’t it a gift that we can continue to develop and grow as parents, and do more of what we now know feel to be best?
With the example my daughter gave, all that she said was that it felt inappropriate to her and she wondered if it was okay. She didn’t tell me who it was, and I’m pretty sure (because of the context in which she shared it) that there was something about the lack of boundary that didn’t feel right. I don’t know if it was in comparison to how I was that it didn’t feel right or more than that.
I’m a believer in enjoying spending time with your children, whatever the age of the child is. How a boundary is perceived depends on the person on both sides of the relationship. Similar to your experience, when our children moved into the early teen years, it made space for a different kind of relationship with them, and at that point, almost all of them their thoughts and feelings about different issues with me, and we could have connected over these kind of activities without any loss of parental authority.
At this point I share much more of myself with my teens as well as joke around with them, without concern that it affects my authority in their eyes. That’s in part because once there’s a clear understanding that a parent is the parent from the time they’re young, it makes room to relax together and enjoy each other’s company.
Ah, that’s interesting! From your first writing, I had thought your daughter was implying that she enjoyed the experience with her mother’s friend, but seems she felt something was off. And naturally she got that sense from experiencing your firm and healthy boundaries and roles, so she was able to have that gut feeling that something was perhaps not quite right. What a gift!