Are we the parent or the friend? Or a parfriend?

When I was growing up, my parents were certainly not my friends. Nor did I expect them to be.? It was very clear that they were the parents that provided for me and supported me, which clearly afforded them the ability to make the decisions. And as “the child”, I simply had to go with it, having very few choices as part of it.

There was no, “What should we do today?” Or “Should we go here on holiday or there on holiday?” “Should we get this for takeout or that for takeout?”

There were very few choices with life as a child, but that was ok as well, after all I was a child. I, along with my sister, were dragged everywhere my parents wanted to go. Their friends' houses, grocery shopping, beach, etc… they largely decided most things in life for us. Clearly sports and other hobbies were on us, but a lot wasn’t.

They rarely thought about how we felt as we had to accept their decisions. Don’t get me wrong, I think we had a wonderful upbringing that was filled with love, affection and lots of yummy food (sometimes too good), but it wasn’t through the lens of choice.? That upbringing clearly made me who I am, and I will forever be grateful to my parents for doing what they did. Compared to the stories I’ve heard from others and their childhood journey, we were blessed.?

These days, I feel parenting is a little more complicated. Perhaps it’s because when we were little, we had little to no choice around decisions so to deal with that as a parent, we decided to provide more choice to our kids. Rather than tell our kids where we’re going, or we’re getting this or, we’re traveling there, we turn it into a choice/optional question.

What do you feel like for dinner? Are these 3 options ok? What should we do today? Where should we travel to? Should you do basketball training or go to this learning class? And the myriad of other questions that are parent-child related.

Even the must do things are turned into a question.

Is it time for bed? Is it time for a shower? Time for brushing teeth??

Notice that the demand/direction is turned into a question? A choice. Subtly we’ve turned what we believe is good parenting, to actually be a servant to parenting. It’s really a head scratcher.

What are we doing?

As if a child has the life experience to make the right decision? Isn’t that our job? Shouldn’t we just be telling them? We offer to empower, I guess. Then when they make a decision that we don’t agree with, we then go into a diatribe of why that's the wrong decision. And if we just tell them what we’re doing or the decision we’ve made, I wonder if that’s the better way to parent. It’s like they won’t “like us anymore”? What the?

We are the parents and that means we need to make the decisions we feel are in their interests based on our experience. How can they make the right decision? Do they then have to deal with the consequences?

What’s different from the times when I was a child and the relationship with my parents compared to now? My parents were never my friends, however these days I feel as a parent, I (just like many of you out there) want to be our children’s friends. Open up to us, confide in us, share challenges, successes, etc… We want to hang out and be cool with them. We connect through social platforms and the many other ways to “be cool”. So, while trying to be their friend, we kind of stop being their parent.?

We were rarely given choices as kids, which is why I guess we want to give our kids choices. But while we’re giving them the choices, are we doing the job of parenting?

I love my kids unconditionally however I really wished many times we would be their parent rather than their friends. I want to be their friend also but only when it's not at the expense of being their parent and making the right decision in their interests and not necessarily chosen by them. Even if they don’t like the decision, do what our parents did, parent, and not Parfriend.

And No, Parfriend (Parent friend) is not a new term in the Urban dictionary. Well not yet anyway, but perhaps it should be.