Teen Voices: Should Parents Be Friends With Their Teens
Should Parents Be Friends With Their Teens?
Yes!
By Melissa Brandt
I’m not saying that my mom and I should stay up all night braiding each other’s hair and gossiping. But I will say that, in my experience, when I have an open conversation with her about boys, parties, school or anything, we fight a lot less. Instead of parenting me, and yelling at me, she’s talking with me and advising me.
As with many teens, I don’t react well to yelling. As soon as my mom starts to raise her voice, this immediately translates into white noise as I frame a huffy retort in my mind. That, or I just storm out.
And please, moms: don’t ever lecture. There’s nothing more satisfying for a teen than to do exactly the opposite of whatever was preached. It’s fun! There’s something thrilling about doing the prohibited.
This happened a couple of weeks ago when my mom sits me down and says in the I-know-more-than-you voice: “Now, just because you’re some big-shot, second semester senior, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to attend class…” I didn’t hear much beyond that, because now I’m frustrated. Here I am, proud of myself for how much effort I’ve been putting into school when so many kids around me are giving up, and yet my mom is still lecturing me? It feels like there’s no way to win. So now the idea of ditching a period or two creeps into my mind, where previously I had no such thoughts.
The parent-teen relationship, by principle, pits kids against parents—they’re the enemies! That’s just the way things are. But today there’s this novel approach in which parents assume the role of friends in their kids’ lives. This doesn’t mean they are lesser parents for it. Because a true friend will listen to your problems, advise you about solving them, hug you when things don’t go your way. Parents are guaranteed to be the kind of friends who have your best interests at heart, and the extra experience so that they are able to guide you with that much more wisdom.
So yes, I’ve learned to talk to my mom as I would a friend, and I expect her to treat me as a friend as well. I tell her almost everything in my life and it’s a relief. I don’t have to worry about what happens if she reads through my texts or gossips with other parents in town.
I’m comfortable asking, for example: “Hey, so there’s a party tonight at Elizabeth’s house. There’s going to be drinking, would you be able to give me a ride home?” Sure, she now knows that maybe I am drinking, but I’m doing so responsibly. Plus I’m not driving and I know that I’ll have to talk to my mom at the end of the night.
My mom knows better than to prohibit drinking. She’s aware that teenagers will find a way to drink no matter what the age on their driver’s license says. So rather than argue pointlessly, she talks to me as a peer would. She tells me to be careful, sharing an anecdote about how a night of drinking turned into one spent in the ER, after she fell from the porch at a frat house. It makes me realize that she is justified in her concern and I take her advice to heart.
It’s a lot easier to heed my mom’s advice when she doesn’t act like the all-knowing parent. When she relates to me and shares her own stories I want to listen. I feel comfortable telling her about my crush, having known she had similar boy troubles in high school. I’m willing to whine about the pressures of school, knowing she’s been in the same position.
So parents everywhere, don’t stop parenting. Just realize that you’re kids have grow out of diapers and, as teenagers, deserve to be treated as thinking, functioning people. We are not puppets to be controlled and trying to be that puppet master will backfire 99.9% of the time. I know from experience there will be at least a couple of smug parents, who read this with the impression that, no, they are the exception. They have their kid under control. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that perfect child of yours is doing all the typical teenage nonsense—the only difference being that you have no awareness of it, and thus a lot less control.
Keep it simple. Talk to your kids. Really listen to what they have to say and remember being in their shoes as a teenager. Act as the friend you would want them to have. Pretty soon you’ll find that they treat you as a friend in return.
No!
By Lily Ryan
Calling my parents my friends would imply some sort of equal footing between the three of us—that I have as many responsibilities as they do, that we owe each other insight into the details of our respective lives, and that I think of them as “Kathleen and Steve” rather than as “Mom and Dad.” This is not the relationship I have with my parents, nor is it the one I would want.
Eight months ago, my opinion on this subject may have been reversed. On their way to a party, my friends stopped by my house, forcing me out of bed and relieving my eyes Sent from my iPhone
My friends often don’t understand my mom’s rules—why she enforces a curfew, why she sometimes makes me drive to parties, or why she gives me ultimatums. To this she would answer that I am seventeen; I do not need to stay out all night, nor do I need to go out every night of the week. And if she doesn’t threaten withholding my allowance, my room will never get cleaned.
That is not to say that I love when my parents yell at me, or that I always willingly comply with their demands. My sisters and I have become the queens of eye rolls and muttering phrases under our breaths, just quietly enough so that our parents won’t hear, and our mother’s nagging will probably never cease to ring in our ears. And I seem to butt heads with my mom daily (she is the type of person who knows that she is always right—unfortunately, so am I).
But to me, this is how a family should work; the parents are in charge, because they have been through what the children have been through, and they know best. And the children, no matter how many inside jokes they make against their parents or how many tears they shed in the midst of an argument, know that at the end of the day, their parents have their best interest at heart, and through all the fighting and temporary/impulsive hatred, the two will always love and respect each other.
One of my acquaintances has a different relationship with her parents—they don’t enforce rules, but rather try to please her teenage angst and impress and fit in with her friends. In the nature versus nurture debate, I would blame their parenting style for the shady person that she has become.
I don’t think that parents necessarily need to befriend their children in order to create mutual trust or start a conversation. My mom is my biggest enforcer, but that is not to say that she will not always be my strongest supporter and my most trustworthy confidant. She is my authority figure, but we still love spending time together, not as friends, but as mother and daughter. I trust her advice and look to her for support in things I would not go to my friends for—and what my friends would consider gossip sessions are, with my mother, much needed, soul-relieving vent sessions only a parent could withstand. It is my mom as my mother, not as my friend, who will take me to the doctor when I’m sick, who will nurse my inevitable broken hearts, and who will transform me into the adult I will one day become.
In the final stretch of my younger teenage years, I will continue to rely on my mom for her nightly cooking, for her proofreading my work, and for her telling me when to get gas and clean my room. I will get frustrated at her for not giving me the freedom that some of my other friends have, and for not always listening to my pleas. I will never fail to blush when she dips her toe into boy talk, or forget to subtract one drink when telling her what I drank that night. And in three months’ time, I will leave for college, and I will miss my irreplaceable mother in a way that I could not miss my friends.
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