Am I Supposed to Be My Kid's Friend?

When seven-year-olds get an equal vote in family decisions...

I frequently give talks to parents on issues related to technology.  After my presentations, parents ask for advice in managing their children’s behavior.  I hear similar questions and worries everywhere I go, with slight variations depending on the population of my audience.  However, I am nearly always met with one specific concern that comes in response to my more challenging suggestions, the ones our kids don’t like. 

It goes like this: parent asks a question about something their kid is doing or wants to do with technology, something they’re worried about, usually the amount of time the child wants to use it or the kind of tech he/she is using.  I respond with a suggestion or intervention that requires limit-setting and a set of guidelines for incorporating that change.  The parent then says some form of this: “But if I do what you’re suggesting, I’m going to be yelled at or hated by my kid; it’s going to cause a huge problem.”  I usually smile and say yes. This, however, seems to confuse the said parent, as if they’re waiting for me to offer a solution to their problem that doesn’t require discomfort or disagreement, a policy that’s easy to implement.  I then deliver the following, sometimes surprising news alert: “As a parent, you're not supposed to be your child’s friend.”

We are living in a time when, as parents, we’re supposed to be our children’s best friends at the same time we’re being their parents.  Moms and dads hang out with their kids as if they’re hanging out with peers.  When there’s a disagreement, parents believe we’re supposed to negotiate with our kids as if we’re negotiating with equals.  Parents of seven-year-olds report to me (with a straight face) all the reasons their child doesn’t agree with their decisions regarding the child’s behavior.  I see parents of children under the age of five who get an equal vote in setting up the rules of the house, which includes the rules that will apply to the children.  I hear the delight of parents who are friended by their kids on social media.  We’re spoon-fed the message that we’re supposed to be buddies with our kids and that they should like us, all the time. And, that we’re bad parents if they are upset by our decisions.

We have thrown away the distinction between adult and child, undermined the wisdom of our adult experience, all so that we can be liked by our kids. We’re choosing to be our children’s playmates rather than to do what’s best for them.  There’s no wonder kids now hurl profanities at their parents in public places, to which the parents giggle awkwardly, and wonder if this too is part of the new hip friend/parent milieu.  As parents, we’re taking the easy path, the path of least resistance, telling ourselves that if our kids like us, then we must be doing this parenting thing right.  In the process of trying to be friends with our kids, however, we are giving away our authority, depriving them of the experience of being taken care of, denying them the serenity, trust, and confidence that arises from knowing that we can stand our ground and protect them even when it incites their anger.  It is precisely because we love our children that we need to be able to tolerate their not liking us all the time.  

When we’re driven by the desire or responsibility to be liked, we’re giving ourselves an impossible task.  We simply cannot prioritize being liked and simultaneously raise healthy, sane, human beings who can tolerate frustration and disappointment.  We are setting ourselves up for suffering and failure.  We survive on the ephemeral crumbs of being liked—liked for giving them what they want, while denying ourselves the real nourishment of the experience of providing our kids with what we know they really need, pleasing or otherwise.  We are, as with many other things, opting for the easiest, most immediate and pleasurable option over the deeper, harder, more thoughtful and ultimately satisfying choice. 

We are also, in this friending over parenting process, doing a great disservice to our kids.  Our kids need boundaries and guidelines.  A woman I work with who was raised by a parent who, above all, wanted to be her friend, put it this way: “I never felt like there was someone to stop me if I got to the end of the earth and was going to dive off.”  Our kids, even though they may scream and throw things, also want us to know things that they don’t, to stick with our knowing despite their railing, to be willing to tolerate their rants in service of their best interests—to take care of them in ways they can’t yet take care of themselves.  Our kids want us to demonstrate fierce grace.  We too feel our best when we walk the walk of fierce grace. 

Often, children do not know what’s best for them, and almost never do they know what’s best for them when it comes to technology use.  It’s hard enough for us grownups to realize what’s best for ourselves and children have front brains that are not anywhere near fully-developed.  Allowing children to make their own rules around technology is like handing an opioid addict a vial of heroin or bottle of oxycontin and asking him to make his own rules on how to use.  Young children and teenagers should not get an equal vote in matters that relate to their tech use, nor in many other matters. As parents, we usually possess at least a couple or more decades of experience under our belts that our children don’t possess. Put simply, we know things they don’t, and we can tell them this truth. This makes our kids not equal in matters that require discipline or hard choices, ones that go against what their brains’ pleasure centers, hormones, or inexperienced thinking tells them is best. 

Remember this: it’s okay for your child to be upset with you; it’s okay if they don’t like or agree with the decisions you make; it’s okay if your child is madder than a wet hornet at you for setting limits and sticking to those limits. You're allowed to say no; it takes great courage to say no.  You're not a bad parent if it gets bumpy and your child goes through periods when he/she doesn’t like you—at all—and maybe even says she hates you for a while. It probably means you’re doing your job as a parent. 

Assuming your role as the authority in your child’s life is critical, and the more you assume that role, the more you will feel the wisdom of your own authority.  Being the authority doesn’t mean turning a deaf ear to your child’s anger, disappointment, or anything else they feel.  We can listen to our kids’ emotions and thoughts while simultaneously holding our ground on what we know is best for them.  Being the authority in your kid’s life doesn’t mean being callous or insensitive, but it does mean being brave enough to stay strong in the face of a tsunami that might come back at you, knowing that your role is to be the grown up in the parent-child relationship, to be loving in your willingness to do what’s best for your kids.  Your role is not to be your child’s friend. 

How to Deepen Your Relationship With Yourself

We all want to be happy which, at the simplest level, means that we want our life to be filled with experiences that we like and enjoy. There is nothing more inborn to the human being than the desire to want what is happening to indeed be happening. In service to this basic drive, we do everything we can to create lives that contain experiences that we want. The drive to create a life we like is a most healthy drive.

When we get what we want in our lives, there isn’t much that needs to be said or done. We might want to learn how to more fully enjoy the desired experiences or be more present or grateful, but such changes are fun and relatively stress-free. We are working with life’s good stuff, trying to figure out how to feel the good a little more intensely, or make the good stuff into great stuff.

But the question that every human being at some point in their lives needs to answer is not what to do with the experiences that they want, but rather what to do with the experiences that they don’t want.  No matter how hard we try to create a life that contains only what we want, life always includes the full menu. The fact that our life contains undesirable aspects simply means that we are human.

The question is not whether we can prevent unwanted experiences, we can’t, but rather how to live and relate to the experiences that we consider unwanted or painful. Can we live those experiences, in a new way such that they are not so painful, scary and derailing?

We have been conditioned to view unwanted experiences as personal failings. We believe that there is always something that we could have done differently to make that experience not happen, and if we could have done that thing, we would be a better person with a better life. But what if you were to choose to relate to your unwanted experiences as nothing out of the ordinary, simply a normal part of every human life? Could you throw out all ideas of the unwanted as representing some personal failure or success? What if the undesired aspects of life could just be what they are and not about your personal worthiness? What if you were to choose to relate to difficult experiences as opportunities to embrace yourself in compassion instead of assaulting yourself with blame?

In addition, we relate to unwanted experiences as dangerous to our wellbeing.  We believe that if we allow ourselves to accept or look into such experiences more deeply, we will be harmed. In truth, we have a choice as to what kind of relationship we want to conduct with our unwanted experiences, and ourselves when we are inside them. We can choose to turn towards the unwanted experiences, and get curious about the ways that our mind and body respond when in contact with the unwanted. As counterintuitive as it is to our conditioning, we can welcome unwanted experiences (when they have chosen to arrive despite our wishes) as fertile ground for discovery and enlightenment, a chance to get to know ourselves more deeply and truthfully, to honestly meet who we are. Could you get interested in whatever experience is arising in your awareness right now, to welcome the comfortable and the uncomfortable as equal opportunities for self-awareness and discovery?   Could you decide to turn your attention to the thoughts, feelings and sensations that are happening inside you even if they are not what you normally consider pleasurable?

We have a lot more choice than we believe in how we live our individual experiences. While we are conditioned to believe that negative experiences must be experienced negatively and positive ones, positively, we can shift this belief with a different attitude towards the purpose and meaning of experiences and what, ultimately, they are here to offer us. 

Try shifting your perspective for a day. You can always abandon the practice. Nothing will be lost. Imagine getting interested in whatever is arising inside you, whatever is happening in response to your present experience.  Choose to investigate your own experience, even when it is uncomfortable, and relate to it as an intimate doorway into your own mind and consciousness. You can opt to view all experience as just this. When all experiences are opportunities to deepen your relationship with your own being, to know your self, you can stop being so afraid of and rejecting of the experiences that you don’t want.

We will never stop trying to create experiences that we want. It is who we are as human beings. Until we are enlightened we will always prefer and wish for experiences that we like over those that we don’t. But when experiences do arrive at our doorstep (as they always will) that we have not invited, that we would never choose to bring into our house, it is best to find a way to relate to them without fear, and turn them into houseguests if we can. All experiences, welcomed, are opportunities to see and know the truth of ourselves more clearly. With this attitude, we can relate to our whole life, the sweet and the bitter, as enlightening, not necessarily wanted, but enlightening nonetheless, and in that light, meaningful.

Stop Hating Yourself For Hating Vacation

I have a confession: I am really bad at vacation. More to the point, I am really bad at doing nothing. When I say doing nothing, I don't mean not having an activity or a plan, at that I am quite skilled. Rather, the doing nothing that is so hard is that of not being engaged in some kind of purposeful endeavor: creating, learning, developing, figuring out, etc.

On a positive note, being really bad at doing nothing has served me well in life. While I am curious and energetic by nature, still, the anxiety that accompanies not being engaged in something has contributed immensely to my productivity. Not being able to do nothing has condemned me to a fate of continual learning, creating, and ultimately, accomplishing. You could say that not being able to do nothing has made me quite an achiever.

While it feels good to be productive, it doesn't feel good to not know how to NOT be productive. Being disengaged can feel like a death sentence, and yet, it is a part of life. We cannot be engaged all the time; we cannot outrun downtime. Knowing that there is a part of life that I'm really bad at, that feels like a death sentence, has always loomed menacingly in the background of my consciousness. It moved to the foreground this last week on the yearly family beach holiday. While reading, dialogue and just plain thinking are always available, for the most part family beach vacations are a time when we are purposefully not engaging our minds, but rather hanging out doing a whole lot of nothing (unless you consider sipping frozen drinks a something). We are on holiday, to some degree, with the precise intention of disengaging our minds. What to do then when your mind doesn't disengage but there is nowhere to put it. Herein lies the problem.

For years I have berated myself for having such a hard time on vacation, and felt disappointed in the fact that for the first five days of holiday I feel like a trapped animal pacing the bars of a too small cage. Why is it so hard for me to relax and do nothing, create nothing, think about nothing, just be here in the nothingness? I have asked myself this question on innumerable occasions (in a not very compassionate tone). Why must I always have a bone for my mind to chew on? After all these years of spiritual practice and meditation, am I really just as unable to sit still in the open, undirected space, to be awareness without an object of that awareness?

And then something amazing happened on this holiday. It seems that all the years of spiritual practice kind of kicked in. What changed wasn't so much "me" or "my" experience of doing nothing, but rather my relationship with that "me" and "my" experience. On the third day of this year's beach holiday I woke up edgy and uncomfortable, the way I usually do on vacation, but with the profound realization that this IS the way I experience beach holidays. I do feel caged in and claustrophobic with an underlying “get me out of here” anxiety—at least for the first four or five days, just in time to enjoy one or two days and then go home again. I woke up that third morning to the realization that this simply is the way I'm wired. My experience is not supposed to be another way, better or more peaceful. I am not supposed to be another way. To know this was so simple, but oh so life changing!

What changed on this holiday was not how I experience vacation but my struggle against that experience. Instead of trying to will or berate myself into enjoying the holiday, I started observing myself as that edgy trapped animal. So too, I started compassionately allowing myself the right to do whatever I needed to do to feel less trapped. I gave myself more time to meditate and run. While I had always offered myself this in the past, I now gave it to myself without guilt or remorse, as one would offer insulin to a diabetic. I, the larger awareness, could then be okay while my mind frantically burned, struggling against having nothing to sink its teeth into.

It is not so much the difficulty that we experience that causes the worst pain but rather, the way we struggle against that difficulty, as if we are not supposed to have it. Finally, after many years of vacationing in agitation, I let go of this belief, that it could be any other way, and that I could or should be someone who can transition out of her engaged life at home and immediately start enjoying nothingness, simply because it's warm, I'm with family, and most of all, it's vacation—the very time I am supposed to be having fun. Finally, I welcomed the mind that actually lives in this body, the one that doesn't enjoy the first few days of really…anything. With this acceptance, I became kind of okay.

When I stopped judging myself for the experience I was having, stopped hating myself for hating vacation, I discovered two wonderful things: humor and compassion. Humor, in that I could suddenly laugh at my persistent irritation and overwhelming restlessness, and my complete inability to land in the loveliest of places. And, that after all the effort that it took to get there, all the waiting for it come, all the counting down of the days, the truth is I really wanted to be anywhere else. Compassion, in that I could feel loving kindness toward my own mind, my own self. I certainly don't want this to be the way that I experience holidays, and yet it is. At last, I could laugh and empathize with my own uncomfortable nature, a part I had long rejected. What a different place I had discovered simply as a result of dropping the fight against what is happening. We believe that suffering will end when we remove the experiences that are difficult and unlikable. That would certainly make sense. But the truth is counter-intuitive. We remove the primary cause of suffering when we stop criticizing and trying to change our experience as it actually is. We find equanimity when we surrender to the chaos. We find peace and self-love when we agree to meet and welcome the parts of ourselves that we enjoy and even more importantly, the parts we don't.