Parenting is Not about Being the BFF

Your job is not to be your child’s “best-friend” or “sibling.” Parents using this style tend to view a child as a confidante, which typically means giving too much information.

Experience tells us children become easily burdened by parental financial and relationship problems. Likewise, playing the best friend means it is more difficult to correct or make decisions that are displeasing to your child.

As a parent you will say no to your child and you will make her angry. While it’s hard to say no, it’s even more difficult to say no to your best friend.

One day your relationship may develop along the lines of friendship, but during adolescence it is better to be comfortable—as comfortable as you can be—not being the friend. Your child will be better served if you are authoritative instead.

An authoritative parent is one who is warm and caring, but is also highly structured. Authoritative parents have rules and high expectations for their children.

An episode from Grey’s Anatomy helped me see the big picture. Physician Addison Montgomery has a pregnant patient who demands to have a non-surgical birthing. After practicing ‘natural’ childbirth, the patient refuses to accept anything else. She believes doctors push too early to perform C-sections, and she will not agree to the procedure Dr. Montgomery feels is necessary.

Because a past trauma has made her question her own decisions, Dr. Montgomery acts more like an indulgent parent than an experienced and authoritative physician. Under the onslaught of her patient’s tempestuous demands, Dr. Montgomery abandons the position she knows to be necessary.

Another doctor helps Montgomery to realize her responsibility is to be the competent, knowledgeable physician she is, not a woman vying for first place in a Miss Congeniality contest.

Dr. Montgomery returns to the pregnant woman’s room. She has to order the patient to shut up to get her to listen. “I have to make a decision that will save your life,” the doctor says. “It’s important and I’m the one who has to make it. Not you. Not now. Discussion closed.”

Only when the doctor is sure of her own position can the patient who is desperate for another outcome respect the doctor’s authority.

Our goal as parents is to be our powerful selves and to evaluate what’s before us. When we make a decision in the best interest of our children, we must hold our ground and say, “Not you. Not now. Discussion closed.”

One mother who listened to a stranger desperately trying to reason with a howling toddler finally remarked to a friend, “That kid and the rest of us will all feel a lot better if Daddy just says no. There’s a reason parents are made bigger than the kids.” I believe it is important to talk and explain your decisions if the child is old enough to understand, but there are also times when it’s necessary to be authoritative, to be more like Dr. Montgomery.

Author Cheryl Dellasega reminds us, “Holding fast to our standards and allowing our children to hate us, on occasion, is mature and responsible, and provides the opportunity to stay firm in our loving, despite the wrath of our progeny.

What better way for a child to learn that a human can dislike or censor another’s behavior while maintaining affection for that person? Could this be the true test of a loving parent: to love a kid—and herself—enough to be, temporarily, despised by that child?”

As children mature, they will have different best friends. Parents provide them with boundaries they need to grow and learn.

Allyn Evans
www.thealertparent.com
Email Me!

I Promise Not Tell

I want to take a poll.

First question: How many times have you heard, “I promise not to tell.”?

Next question: How many times has the person who promised not to tell TOLD?

For many people, keeping something private from others is impossible to do. It’s not to say that the Secret Sharer is bad a person. More times than not, the person who violates your trust is a well-meaning friend or family member who supports you in many ways.

But for whatever reason, they have a hard, hard time keeping quiet.

I’m talking about adults. Here’s something to consider…if adults have so much trouble—adults who love and support you—then wouldn’t you think a teenager might find it even more challenging?

I talk a lot to girls about this very topic. The betrayal stories I have heard and read about push me to have this conversation regularly with teens.

Now you might be wondering if I advise them to keep all their secrets bottled up inside? No, I don’t. But I do ask them to tread carefully and to be mindful of what they tell to others in their lives.

Bottom line: Friends and family members earn the right to be told your secrets. This means that as you build a relationship with someone, you share bits and pieces of your private self in increments. It’s a natural way for a friendship to unfold. It’s after you begin to share personal information with someone that you need to be an observer. I tell girls to pay attention to how the information is handled.

It reminds me of the game of tennis. Hit a ball past me and down my alley (the side of the court), I pay attention. Do it again and I start thinking about the old idiom: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

In my own life, I take careful notes about who keeps my personal information confidential. And sometimes it really isn’t about how much they love you or respect you, but their maturity level. Not everyone can keep a secret. Recall your own experiences when you wanted so badly to share some information you had, but had been asked not to. It’s challenging, is it not?

You’ll now find me repeatedly telling teenagers to be careful. Mostly this talk goes along with my Internet and Cell Phone presentation to teens. In that workshop we spend time talking about public communication. What many of them might not have thought about is that ANY private communication with someone via email and cell phone could, with a push of a button, become instantly public.

To help them avoid embarrassment or harassment, I encourage them to not write or text anything that they wouldn’t want posted on the classroom bulletin board. If they feel compelled to criticize someone, I encourage them to do it in code. Of course, in an ideal world we’d rather they not criticize anyone at all, but we know how difficult that is for us—let alone them—to do.

This is a topic that I continually talk about with my daughter and other teens. Of course, just because I’m talking about it doesn’t mean the message will be heard. Yes, many times it takes learning something the hard way before a point can be absorbed. When your child is betrayed, which WILL eventually happen (if it hasn’t already), help them process and forgive. But more importantly, remind them to be careful when sharing information or personal secrets with friends or family.

Allyn Evans
email me!
www.allynevans.com

BFF No More

“My daughter’s best friend is shunning her,” a reader wrote. “What is she to do?”

This hard, painful loss of a friend is also painful for the caregiver trying to help the child through a bad situation.

“My daughter sort of put all her eggs in one basket with this friend. She really doesn’t have other friends separate from this child. She’s having a hard time.”

Another person told me she had two daughters who experienced a “shunning” within about two months of each other. Her youngest called her long-time best friend a name in anger. The long-time best friend punished her by alienating the child from all their friends. The mother said, “I don’t know what to do. That child is her life. My child’s world evolves around that child.”

Thinking back to my own childhood experiences, I can look from both perspectives—I remember being shunned and being the shunner. Being shunned is, of course, the painful side. A friend told me recently, “I remember eating lots of lunches by myself in middle school.”

How can parents help a child move past a dying friendship so she can meet new people?

I encouraged the lady who emailed me to talk to her child. “Remind her about all the people who do love and care for her.”

I also suggested that she help her daughter build a wider net of possibilities…like adding an extracurricular activity or finding a club of children with similar interests who might also attend different schools.

For example, my daughter enjoys anima (Japanese cartoons). Because of its growing popularity our local library hosts a biweekly Manga Club, which means she has recently met a new group of children who have a similar interest.

If there is not a group for the child’s interest, the parent might work with the library to start one.

Maybe one of the lessons here is introduce your child to many people in many different environments so he is not completely alone if a friend suddenly decides to change the rules.

Something else I talked to this mom about was coaching her daughter through it. Give your child information that will help him or her deal with the loss. First of all, don’t minimize it. It’s painful to lose a close friend. Next, help your child develop solutions and/or options.

A coaching dialogue might run along these lines: “What do you normally do at lunch?”

Your child might respond, “Sit with Joanie. But that’s not going to work anymore.”

Then help her think about what she can do instead. “You like Rachel, right? Where does she sit?”
The mother I coached worked with her daughter on every situation from arriving to school, to lunch and breaks. “What do you do between classes? What can you do instead?” She also talked to her daughter about looking for new people to befriend.

Probably the hardest lesson for a child (and an adult to learn) is the need to let go of the person who is attempting to pull away. The more you grab, the more the other person will resist. Eventually, the person will get away from you. The best way to keep someone, and there are no guarantees, is to let them go.

After a month, I followed up with the mom. Turns out there was a happy ending to this story—well, at least for now.

We all know that as one lives life, people will come and go. Though it sometimes hurts a lot, it’s true that losing one close relationship opens up opportunities for many more enriching experiences.

http://www.allynevans.com/
info at allynevans.com

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