Em Rusciano.
By EM RUSCIANO
I like to think I cartwheel on the line of friend and parent.
Yes, I want to be BFFs with my kids.
That sound you may be hearing is the alarm going off at Dr Phil’s solid gold Texas mansion – as we speak he is racing to his diamond encrusted Bentley to report me to Oprah. I’m expecting a call from his producers at any tick of the clock. I’ll be invited on his show where I’ll perch atop one of those ridiculously high chairs while he yells “If someone disagrees with me, then somewhere, a village is missing their idiot”! - Good one Dr Phil.
What I’m saying is, most experts disagree with me. Most experts feel you shouldn’t be pals with your kid. You may also disagree with me to, but that’s ok, I still like you.
My eldest daughter is on the precipice of puberty. I have gone from living with a smiley, enthusiastic, agreeable child to co-habitating with a small, moody, eye-rolling politician. Everything must be justified and negotiated, there is a fair bit of huffing and puffing going on as well.
Up until this year we have been best buddies who agree on pretty much everything and knew how to compromise on the issues we disagreed on. I had her quite young so I guess we’ve grown up together.
I remember how intense my teenage years were, do you? Remember how you felt every thing eleventy thousand times more than the adults in your life did? I was reminded of this recently, when One Direction changed their concert dates from midyear to around the time of the end of year exams. Young girls all over Australia were absolutely desolate, with one fan tweeting: “Two whole years come down to 5 exams. If 1D come and therefore distract us WHAT IF WE FAIL? No uni, no future.”
Dramatic? Maybe, but man I miss feeling that passionately about everything. Don’t you? I mean you can take the excess body hair (I am an Italian woman) and back acne but the unbridled all consuming zeal for the things I use to love as a teen (which included but were not limited to Kevin Arnold from the Wonder Years, Jason Preistly from 90210 and Degrassi Jnr High), I miss.
Em and her kids. Rocking rad shoes.
The truth is, I still feel acutely connected to how difficult it was being 11-17 years old. I think some parents forget how they felt because they are trying so hard to steer their child down the “right” path.
None of us want our kids to do drugs (even though we may have) none of us want them drinking passion pop directly from a bucket (I may or may not have done that) so we square our shoulders and demand they toe the line.
It’s a bloody messy business this parenting caper and none of us want to stuff it up but sometimes we do because we’re trying so hard to be perfect and have perfect kids. The only thing I am perfect at is being imperfect and I embrace that with vigour.
I must admit I don’t confide everything to my daughter, that’s probably a little too much for her to handle and lets face it – a bit creepy. I’m happy for her to spill her guts to me though, and I’m grateful that she still feels safe enough to. It goes without saying that I will fulfil the functional role required of me. A roof over her head and food on the table, I’ll give her boundaries to push and begrudgingly allow the slow separation from me. That’s the whole point of this phase isn’t it? For Marchella to figure out who she is and to individuate from my values and beliefs to form her own.
I would also like to act as a spiritual guide for her, someone sparkly and serene to look to in times of trouble. Think Dorothy and Glenda the good witch, but with less “little people” involved. I do own a self operated fog machine and several sparkly pink dresses so this could be a reality!
I just don’t feel the need to be authoritarian with my kid, if you do that’s totally cool but for me I’d like to remain friends and evoke the parent card sparingly.
Plus we are nearly the same shoe size and with over 150 pairs of rad shoes I figure I can buy her love for the next wee while!
Things may change. In a couple years time I may be writing about how I sent my wayward child off to a hard labour camp in Siberia. But I needed a game plan for now as the rules were rapidly changing.
So far, it seems to be working.
I’ll keep you posted.
Em Rusciano is the host of Mamamia Today on Austereo (which you should be tuning into at 3pm every weekday on the Today Network) and regularly appears on Network Ten’s ’The Project’. You should follow her on Twitter here and take a look at her website here. You can listen to podcasts of Mamamia today here.
Incidentally, Em is also appearing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year – and her show has actually been inspired by her eldest daughter. You can go here for details.
Comments
46 Comments so far
Good on you! Keeping the lines of communication open is a must. The thing I took away is you’re willing to set boundaries, you’re not saying off you go. You’re saying, if there is a problem, come to me. Let’s talk and together we can solve it. I have that with my parents now. I love it. 11-17 is a tough time for all.
When I am blessed with a child I hope I manage to have a positive relationship with them. And the same shoe size too. xx
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I didn’t have a friendly relationship with my Mum, I mean,I was scared to tell her things of importance – a bit of ‘seen and not heard’. I am trying to be more open with my children than my mother was with me. I hope to find the balance though – I am still the Mum, I am still a person of authority, I just don’t want to be a person to be feared, but rather, respected. A friendly relationship, an open and honest relationship. I don’t tell my kids everything, and I expect there will be some things they don’t tell me, but I want there to be enough respect that when they get to the challenging hormonal teens we are, for the most part, not strangers.
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I love and adore my Mother and I have lots of friends. My mother is friends with my friends. However I want a Mother not another bestie- there is a difference.
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You can be best friends with them when they are in their 20′s.
Up until that time they need parents. You need to be the adult who sets the limits in all areas.
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Em, I don’t have children but I like your approach. You say you will still use the “parent card”, you are just hoping it is sparingly – I think as long as you are prepared to use it (and do) then being friends is great.
When I was in my teens I was reasonably friendly with my parents. I could talk to them (and did), they had plenty of rules but I was OK with them (sometimes they made it easy for me to get out of “bad” things with peers). A lot of the fights we had were over things that we would probably still fight about now if we had to share a house!
When I think back, my teens was a busy time for all of us. They were running a business that was 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had school/sport, and my sister had to be accommodated too. So a lot our time together was spent talking about school, sport and other problems, so it didn’t really feel “friendly” at the time. However, once I left school, they stopped being my parents and are now my best friends who I choose to spend time with.
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im just laughing laughing laughing….two adult children three younger…so having had teens and on that edge again….im nearly wetting myself at the I wanna be besties….easy at 11… get back to me when she is 15! fyi I have enough adult friends without wanting to cultivate children…..
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I have enough adult friends without wanting to cultivate children…..
I love it…
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This is exactly how I feel about parenting.
My Mum was sensational while I was growing up. She was a single Mum, and had to play both roles… but she was no authoritarian. She was no ‘young Mum’ trying to be cool either, she’d had me at 34, so by the time I was 16, she was 50. I could talk to her about anything. I could call her when I was 15 at 4am, worried about a friend who I thought may have had alcohol poisoning. At 16, I could talk to her about wanting to have sex for the first time with my long term boyfriend, so she got me on the Pill. Not only was she there for me, but she was also there for my friends as well. She provided a safe environment for us to be typical teenagers and I will forever be grateful. I am 27 now, with two girls, and I plan to have a very similar parenting approach. In the world we live in now, I want my girls to know they can talk to me about ANYTHING without fear of the consequences. Sure, their friends are their friends, but they are often as clueless as each other which can only lead to disaster.
I’d rather equip my girls with knowledge, and have a little faith in them that they can make the right decisions for them… just like my Mum did for me. I have never smoked a cigarette, done drugs, I’ve had one one night stand and I only drink alcohol socially.
Now as I am older, she is one of my best friends and I adore her.
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I completely agree, I hope to be a friend and mum to my daughter when she gets older. I know it will be a hard path once the teenage years kick in, especially if she is even half the horrendous teen I was. But I think the most important thing is to to talk to your kids like they are your equal, admit when you make a mistake and don’t try to “win” arguments. My mother never ever apologised to me when I was younger even when she was clearly in the wrong, and that completely inhibited our relationship.
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I was in the car with my four children this afternoon when this topic was being discussed on the radio. I said to my 12 year old son, who is the eldest and sitting in the front with me, it’s such a fine line, it is great to be friends with your children however ultimately you need to be the parent. My incredibly insightful son said teenagers don’t need their parents to be friends they need them to be role models………. I am hoping to approach these difficult years with balance, much easier said than done.
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I’m 21 and my mother vacillates between ‘You are an adult we are BFFs’ and ‘Do as I say now because I’m the mother’. It drives me insane – I wish she’d choose one side and stick to it, so at least I knew what I was up against!
You’re all doing the best you can, Em sets boundaries without being a Nzai about it so good on her
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I am very close to my daughter and she is nearly 22 now. I do remember though her getting upset when she was about 16 at not being able to tell me everything like she used to. I recall saying to her that it was because I was her mother and really, I don’t need to know “everything”, that is what her friends are for. I know what it was like and what teens get up to and I just didn’t need to know it all! I was and still am confident by that stage she knew she could come with me with anything serious or if she needed help. It was a real turning point though, where we both knew that we could be friends, but I was her mother first and for most, plenty of girl friends for the other stuff.
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Em, j’adore, but cannot go past this – its Glinda the good witch!! As we will all soon find out when the exquisite Michelle Williams plays her in Oz, Great and Powerful.
Now. As a teacher rather than a parent, I get this. There are some groups I have that I can be friends with – I have an amazing advanced class that has just reached year 10 and I LOVE them, and the feeling is mutual – when I’m on playground duty, they come and hang out with me to talk Hunger Games and what else they are reading. Yet – my year 11s – I HAVE to be bad cop. I can’t smile at them til Easter. So I guess it depends on the child/children.
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I believe that motherhood is a dual role. You are the parent when they need a parent and best friend when you or they need a best friend. (SEE TIP AT THE END)
I am a 51 year old mother of 2. I lived my younger years hard and on the edge as did my husband. We were both migrants (I’m Italian too) who embraced the Aussie way of life. Our parents were very strict and we both rebelled against it. Definately not our best mates. It was a difficult life and we did not want the same for our children. He was much stricter than I was but somehow together, we balanced things out.
He passed away 8 years ago when the kids were 16 (boy) and 12 (girl). Not a good time to lose your father – old enough to know he is gone forever but not old enough to have developed the coping skills.
It was difficult for me as well because all of a sudden, I had to be both mother & father. I could not change the way I parent which resulted in my kids trying to take over the house. If we had not been friends, things could have gotten very bad. I was able to talk sense into them.
I am proud of my children and the relationship I have with them.
You cannot be JUST best friends with your kids because you still have to be able to discipline them but if you have set boundaries from the start, you’ll be able to trust your kids and that is where the friendship starts.
My daughter is 20 and pregnant now and I see her every day, even though she doesn’t live with me. She’d rather be with me than many of her friends. My son on the other hand prefers his mates but we still have a great relationship and he calls me for advice (or to ask me to come over & listen to the new beats he made).
TIP: I gave my children a ‘free pass each’ when they reached the age of 15 or going out alone age. The pass meant that if they got into trouble somehow, they could tell me or dad about it without any consequences or questions. Fort instance if they went out & got drunk, they could ring me and ask me to pick them up without consequences, once.They only ever got 1 free pass and they both used theirs. The good thing about it was that they never needed it again after that.
We decided that if our kids were out and got into trouble, we’d want them to have a way out, without consequences so that they were not afraid of contacting us. Of course that didn’t mean that we wouldn’t talk about it or lecture them. It worked well. Good luck Em!
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my mum was always my best friend when iI was a kid, then a teenager and into adult hood. It can be done and it’s the most rewarding thing ever.
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I think Snap had the correct idea “I think there is a real difference in being friendly with your kids compared with being too scared to make unpopular decisions in case your kids resent you for it.” I now look back on grown up children and I can say I had disputes with other parents over this same thing. I always felt that I talked decisions through with my kids, often before the situation occurred, but if a decision need to be made I made it with the interest of their safety first. Once they had calmed down we would discuss why I made that decision.
I overheard my son telling his daughter my little analogy the other day: 5 year olds can’t see why they can’t play on the road, they will say they will hear a car coming. But as you get older you can understand why some situations are dangerous and often the situation is age appropriate, and that means a 15 year playing cricket in the street will be safer than a 5 year old doing the same thing.
So friendly, not authoritarian but still “age appropriate” with decisions and discussions. My kids were taught about sex before they reached 12, nautraly discussions. So the ground work was there for stupidity and sex.
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A child doesn’t want to be best friends with their mother, a child wants a mother and best friends who are their own age.
A suggest you (Em) find friends your own age and be your children’s mother.
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i disagree, i am best friends with my mum and it is the perfect relationship for us. we are so much closer as a result of being this way.
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i am best friends with my mum
You Sarah need to find yourself some friends from your own peer group.
I think that mothers who want to be their child’s best friend have a real problem as do the kids who want to want their mother to be their best friend. When we are children it’s normal and natural that our mothers are all things to us, we rely of them for our own physical and emotional security, our mother are our whole world.
But as you grow and mature, you slowly stretch those ties and become your own person with your own group of like minded people of a similar age around you. Your mother while still being important to you isn’t your ‘everything’ anymore, you no longer rely on her to satisfy your every need.
If you can’t make that emotional pulling away from your mother and visa a versa you have a real problem. Mothers’ that can’t let go, that still want to perform that pivotal role of being ‘everything’ are over invested in their child.
There is nothing more pathetic that mothers who want to be their child’s best friend. To do that they need to come down to their child’s level, dress like them, go to parties with them, insinuate themselves into their kid’s social groups. And it’s not good for their children.
I can understand girls who say that their sister is their best friend, as sisters are more likely to be a similar age and can have a very close bond. But girls whose best friend is their mother are somewhat sadly lacking.
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Everyones different remember!
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I think there is a real difference in being friendly with your kids compared with being too scared to make unpopular decisions in case your kids resent you for it. I think I have a great relationship with my two & I know they feel like they can discuss lots of things with me. But there are times when I have to make an unpopular decision because I have their best interests at heart. The kids may resent me for this but at the same time I think they respect me as a parent & can understand why boundaries & rules etc are made.
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Don’t do it, have a relationsip built on mutual respect for each other. Your daughter will be your best friend in 10 years or more when she has morphed into an adult and woman hood.
I gave everything i could to my sons growing up and i’m not talking about possessions. I was supportive understanding and unshockable and they just crap on you in the end anyway. We all break our necks to be parents and in the end it can be the biggest deflating experiences in life.
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I agree, I love being a friend to my kids. I think the line about “you should be a parent, not a friend..” is the greatest cliche of modern parenting. There is room to be both, but I am certainly a happier parent when I am more the friend and less the rule-setter. Best advice I think I’ve heard: “Have fun with your kids”.
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I think it’s difficult to be best friends with your parent (your mum especially, if you’re a girl).
My mum and sister have a very difficult relationship because my mum wanted to be her best friend. My mum wants my sister to share EVERYTHING with her and gets very emotional when she doesn’t. My sister, as a result, hates sharing ANYTHING with my mum and will only do so grudgingly. It does not make for a happy relationship.
I suffer the same poor relationship to a lesser degree (let’s just say I learnt to keep secrets very young).
Being a teenager is all about exploring yourself and separating you ideas from your parents, and while having a good relationship with your kids is important, I think it’s s very, very different relationship to a friendship.
Be prepared for when your daughter stops sharing with you. It will hurt, but let her do it and she’ll come back to you when she’s ready.
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There is being BFF’s, which is so cool but then there is over stepping like going to a club, drinking and picking up together. In my experiences the later leads to disaster!
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I think it’s great to keep communication lines open and easy..and be friends with your kids
And as a mum to a 14yo you will also have to play bad cop at times too. Even though ‘everyone else’ was on Facebook we made our daughter wait until she was 13. Even though we get on well she couldn’t comprehend why she had to follow the rules. After a bad situation with some people she knows on Facebook she now understands our stance and why we were ‘mean’. We also don’t let her go to parties we consider inappropriate. Parties with very late pick-ups, where we know there will be older kids and no adult supervision. Again she thought we were mean until one of her peers ended up in hospital having her stomach pumped from drinking so much. Sure that can be a part of growing up but one we don’t consider appropriate for our 14yo. She now sees that while she thinks we’re mean at times, we know so much more than she does and she still meeds protecting. And her friends who can do whatever they like, whose parents they think are really cool, to the rest of us just seem like parents who don’t care or can’t be bothered giving their kids real boundaries.
Be their friend but don’t forget to be mean at times too. Some parents are too scared to be parents.
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i think what you are aspiring to as a parent is great! My mum and i have never been the greatest friends and i find it very hard to tell her things. Im 23 now living out of home so it isnt such a big issue. As i was growing up many of my friends had the friend/mum relationship you describe above. I wouldnt change my mum for the world, i love her and she is a lovely kind person but i would be lying if i didnt say that i wish we were closer like many of my friends. I have always felt scared of her and embarressed to tell her things where as many of my friends would tell their mums first. I think the relationship just depends on the personalities of the mum and daughter. My mum had a very hard upbring so didnt have the best role model herself but I think she has done an awesome job. just cause we have never been bffs or confidants dosent mean we love each other. My mum did the best she could….with my sister being disabled from birth, my dad dying when i was 15 and myself in and out of hospital for the last 10 years she has managed to somehow stay strong and pull my sister and i out of darkness after our dad died. In 2011 I almost died from anorexia and though i know many mums that have thrown their hands up after a 10 year illness my mum stuck with me, visiting me everyday even when i was delusional and didnt know who she was. since i moved out of home in June 2012 we have become more friendly…. i hope as i get older we continue to become closer and one day feel that i can confide in her instead of being scared.
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You can definitely be bestfriends with your children. I’m 17, almost 18 and I absolutely adore my mum and don’t know what I’d do without her.
We don’t get to spend all that much time together because we both have pretty busy lives but we are always making sure we put aside time for each other to have a chat.
I mut warn you though, we haven’t always been this way. Year 7,8 and 9 at high school were very hard years for me, battling through depression and having new life experiences. At that stage in my life I confided in my big sister and left it upto her to talk to my mum If she was concerned about my safety. I didn’t have a very goo relationship with my mother at that time as she was focused on my little brothers mental health issues and I was left to suffer in silence, afraid to burden anyone with my issues.
Mum helped me through all those problems though and she is the only reason I’m still at school and beginning year12.
Good luck with your daughter, the start of high school is when she’ll start to drift from you, but don’t push the relationship or she’ll push further away from you.
Hope that help from a daughters perspective
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I always thought you were really good friends with your daughter & from what I take from what you’ve written this seems to work for you. Observing this kind of parenting when the child becomes an adult is only a problem if their partner would wish some distance between the two of you. Maybe you could pic her partner like you are for your friends & get one that LOVES you as much as she does & doesn’t keep full garbage bags in their bedroom
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This is the kind of mum i hope to be too! I was never bff with my mum, she was always the authority figure, very strict and very conservative and god help you if you strayed off her very straight and narrow path into morality and Righteousness .
So we hid ALOT from her, I fondly remember those teenage days when EVERYTHING MATTERED SO MUCH, I was desperate to belong and to do all the things the people in my year were doing,parties, drinking, having boyfriends etc. but as all of those things were strictly off limits I did so much behind mums back.
Im 28 now and still do not tell her everything cos i dont need the heavy lashings of judgement that is sure to come. I hope i will learn from my experiences and be able to have a more honest relationship with my children, i hate the idea of my kids feeling like they need to hide who they really are from me.
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I loved reading this – I feel like my daughter and I (she is 9) are BFFFFFFFF’s – well that’s what she tells me and I think that is awesome. I know somewhere in the near future she will be totally over me and I maybe a total witch – I hope not (I couldn’t confide in my mum during my teenage years), but I am taking the wins now when I get them and ready to face the stuff ups as we go along – emily : )
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I guess if you think being a friend to your child makes you more accessible to them, then that is a good thing. But at some point you are going to have to act in a way that their friends don’t – tell them to do something they don’t want to hear, forbid them to do something you know from your great experience has far too much risk attached. Will your child feel totally betrayed when you suddenly switch roles? will that destroy your relationship? will you have the “parent card” to play, if you have never really exercised it before? why does acting like a parent seem to imply you only act like an authoritarian know it all disciplinarian?
I have always appreciated the fact that I have many friends, and they come and go sometimes, or they fit with certain phases of my life. But my mother is my mother is my mother. I am a mother myself now and we enjoy each other’s company immensely, but I am still being parented every day by her. I don’t, and never did need her to be my friend. Being my mother is far more precious and valuable to me.
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That’s a very black and white view. Human relationships are far more complex than that. You can be friends and have boundaries, authority and expectations within that relationship. I would argue that this is the single best lesson you can give your child. Too many of us don’t understand that very human dynamic at all.
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I think if it encourages an environment of sharing from your daughters side, at her age, then it is fine. It is age-appropriate. I do find it a bit wrong when people don’t have a more authoritative approach with younger ones. They need boundaries to feel safe and secure.
In saying that, if the parent is over-sharing, I think that can be damaging to a child. My mum took BFF to a whole new level…she cried on MY shoulder before I was even a teen and that is way too much for a kid to handle.
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I think its great being close to a child to a point they can tell you everything or so you think they do but let’s face it your child is not and never will be your BFF. You can be a friend to your child sure but being a patent has to come first.
My mother in law and sister in law are best friends to a point where my sister in law no longer sees her mother as a mother she doesn’t allow other people to be close to her best friend and she has no real respect for her actual mother. I think her mother wanting to be a BFF did not be a mother enough allowing her daughter to do wrong so as to always be close to her and not be the “bad” parent. Her daughter is still like that to this day is really sad.
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When I was young my mother took the firm position of mother but her personality and style was never to be harsh and in charge. She gave me as much information as I needed on anything I asked about and anything I didn’t which allowed me to make informed choices, and I felt I could tell her anything. Very, very rarely did she intervene in my life, but when she did, I knew for certain she was right and she wasn’t just being mean for the sake of it, but she still never told me no and let me make the choice. And in the end, I made the choice she endorsed. I partied when I was young, quite heavily, did naughty stuff and had fun, let that part of me out but I also topped my high school class, got an ATAR of 94.45, have had a job since I was 13 and tick all of the ‘boxes’ you’re meant to. I hope I can parent like her someday.
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Gilmore Girls! It’s unrealistic, (it was a tv show after all) but I like to think that my daughter and I will have that kind of relationship.
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My parents were very much in the authoritarian camp. I’d say they probably achieved their goals in that I never drank, did drugs or had sex whilst I was living with them, but I also didn’t have any fun. I missed out on a ton of normal teenage experiences because it was just too hard (and often embarrassing) to get permission to a party or even just go to a movie with friends. The one time I did go to a party, my parents made such a huge deal of it in the lead-up (numerous excessively long talks about drinking, peer pressure etc., calling just about every attendee’s parents for god knows what reason, giving my friends a lecture on looking out for me…) that by the time the party actually happened I just wanted it over so they’d stop harassing me. In high school I lost a lot of friends because until I was 16 my parents wouldn’t let me go anywhere but school without them. I couldn’t go shopping, couldn’t go their houses unless a parent would be there at all times and said parent had been sufficiently interrogated and judged acceptable, I couldn’t even go for a walk around the block by myself. My mother would completely lose her mind if I so much as slammed a door, despite having some serious anger issues of her own, so I never got to express all the usual teenage angst either, and I think that’s heavily contributed to me being such a reserved, painfully shy person who can’t open up to anyone.
I barely talk to my parents these days. They don’t know anything about my life and I like it that way. I think they thought we were somehow just going to transition from them treating me like a possession that had to controlled like a dog on a leash to being besties.
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My mum had a similar parenting style and to this day we are close because I felt like we could talk about things without her yelling at me or telling me I was doing it wrong.
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“so far, it seems to be working. I’ll keep you posted.”
Parenting Mantra! Haha.
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I think the parent/friend balance is something that evolves over time. When I was a teenager I wouldn’t have said my mum was my friend – but that was fine, I had plenty of friends and needed a mum. Of course, in our house being a mum meant still being kind and respectful. Now that I am an adult, but still live with mum, I would say we have moved closer to the friend end of the spectrum which is more what we both need now. That said, the mum card does still come out occasionally – but again, I have plenty of friends but only one mum.
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Off-topic but I didn’t know where else to express this regarding:
“Recent Comments”.
I don’t know what the rationale was behind changing the front page’s recent comments (they used to be on the right hand side and were clickable). It is a recent change and I miss this feature BIG TIME. Pease change it back MM?!?!?!
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Em, I am in no way as cool as you but I have a very similiar parenting strategy. I have always talked to my kids about everything and no topic is off limits. I do remember being a teenager and hated that I could not talk to my mum which was crazy given that she became a mum at 16. My kids are now 23,19 and 16 and they are all happy, well adjusted kids who know they can talk to me about anything. We have some horrendous yelling matches at times and we don’t always agree but they are in no doubt that I will be there for them no matter what.
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I think this is awesome – it’s the kind of mum I want to be eventually. I think the difference is that you’re going to do what’s right for your kid – EVEN if it means she doesn’t like you for a little while.
The problem with people who want to be friends with their kids is that they let them do anything and get away with everything so that they can be “the cool parent”. Obviously that doesn’t always work out so well.
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High five, Em. I don’t have kids but I’m 22 years old, remember my teens with alarming clarity and I think your daughter is lucky to have a mum like you. Through your parenting style you are establishing a relationship with your daughter where she will feel comfortable talking to you.
My mum was an authoritarian and while I love her so, so much, her harsh parenting style has resulted in a lot of secrets between us. When I was around 16 years old I realised that if I told my mum certain things (even if they were hypothetical situations that I just wanted to discuss) she would yell, lecture me and get very angry. Thus I quickly discovered that I had to keep things to myself. This resulted in me not discussing certain concerns with her and either navigating the tricky waters of being a teenager alone or asking my equally-clueless (or occasionally a-bit-too-experienced) friends.
Also, I am sure this was not my mum’s intention, but as a result of her parenting style I grew up feeling like every time my opinion differed from hers, that I was ‘wrong’ and ‘stupid’. A particularly strong memory is me saying in response to something on the news that I was pro-choice. My mum jumped into a loud lecture about how abortion was killing a baby, wrapping it up with ‘and why are we even talking about this, you shouldn’t be having sex anyway’. (I wasn’t having sex but would not have told her if I had been). My mum raised me to see her as a perfect, intelligent (she is but that’s not relevant here) person who never made mistakes. Thus I felt distanced from her and like she could never possibly understand me. So I think it is great that you embrace being imperfect.
I hope you and your daughter continue to enjoy a great relationship
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Excellent comment – couldn’t have said it better myself!
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