“Mom, am I your best friend?”
My son asked me that question the other night and I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since.
My gut feeling as ‘Mama Bear’ was to tell him that of course he was my best friend, thus avoiding potentially hurting his precious heart. He’d have smiled and hugged me and I’d have smiled and we both would have felt good inside and gone back to watching football.
But…I didn’t follow the gut feeling. Instead, I paused and thought about the implications of the question. While I love my kids more than I could ever describe, I think it is important that they understand the difference between ‘parent’ and ‘friend’. A friendship consists of (well, should consist of) two individuals on equal footing, neither having any social power over the other, who voluntarily interact because they find the relationship valuable and worth the continued effort.
The parent/child relationship is not the same. It may seem like semantics, but to your child it’s an important distinction. A parent is ‘above’ the child in the social hierarchy, having power over them and being looked to as the authority on all things. Also, contrary to friendship, a child has no choice over whether or not they want to continue the relationship with the parent or not (at least when they are minors).
Why does this matter? Because the roles of friends and roles of parents and children are very different. Think about it this way: if I tell my son that he is my best friend, I now subconsciously worry even more about upsetting him, having him be mad at me, etc., because words matter and the word ‘friend’ is paired with a certain type of interaction in my brain. It has been since early childhood. Similarly, he has the concept of ‘friend’ in his brain as well, and it doesn’t consist of discipline and rule-setting. This blurry line can end up leading to a lot of potential issues such as:
Me subconsciously avoiding setting/enforcing limits because I want him to like me
Me leaning on him to help me with things that I’d typically get support from an adult to manage
Him being confused if I scold him, discipline him, etc., because ‘friends’ don’t do those things to each other
Him potentially thinking that since we are ‘friends’ he can speak to me and interact with me in the way he interacts with his friends
And those are just the examples that I came up with off the top of my head. The hierarchy may feel icky to you at times, and telling him that he’s not your best friend may seem hurtful in the moment, but it’s an important boundary that helps him put you in the appropriate social ‘category’. Learning these categories is important even into adulthood when we have to differentiate between friends, coworkers, bosses, etc.
So what did I say when he asked me if I was his best friend? I said, “No, Bubs, but you are my son and one of my favorite people in the whole world and I love you more than you could ever imagine.” He smiled at first, and then frowned a bit and asked why he’s not my best friend. I told him that it wouldn’t be fair for him to have to try to be friends with an adult, because we’re ridiculous (which is true), and then summarized the reasons I gave above to fit the teeny tiny attention span of an 11-year-old boy. He smiled, hugged me, and we went back to watching football, having successfully strengthened our bond as well as clarified our parent/child relationship.
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