Why You SHOULD Be Your Child’s Friend

now I know and I know this from experience that the minute you tell people be your child's friend they get very very nervous and my first question is okay why why does that make you nervous and usually response I get is well I'm not my child's friend I'm my child's parent okay are they mutually exclusive son didn't seem to think so so I'm just wondering are they mutually exclusive I'm not my child's friend I'm their parent okay but then the the the bigger question is supposedly if you're saying that because it it's some way uh flies in the face of your values then I would ask you to tell me what's the Torah source that prohibits such a relationship like ostensibly you're saying on on grounds of Torah values you don't want to God forbid be your child's friend so my question is okay vate where does it say that give me the source where it says you're not supposed to do that or is it possible that that sentiment itself comes from the outside world and and we just heard one person say it to another person and it just sort of became grandfathered in as uh accepted wisdom so I just want to clarify that having a child look at a parent as a friend was good enough for the Kim's family and I think it's good enough for any God-fearing Jew and I don't think there's any case that could be made that it's problematic unless of course maybe you have some secular Source but in that case isn't that the whole reason that you were afraid of it that you thought it was something that was from outside of Judaism so at any rate I I just want to give everyone permission to actually be a child's friend and not just because it's more pleasant to be a friend than to be an authority figure a policeman um but actually because and this hopefully with hashem's help I'll be able to explain tonight this is just going to facilitate good K all around there's there's nothing more powerful there's nothing that's a a more successful Catalyst to making everything go smoothly than our children being able to emotionally depend upon us and view us as safe people trustworthy people who they want to come to and learn from now I want to clarify something when I say that we're meant to be our children's friends I want to make it very clear what I do not mean and maybe this is where the uh the the resistance is coming from or at least on a subconscious level is when people think of the of this idea of being a child's friend they think of it as a two-way street that my child is also my friend and I just want to clarify that that's not what we're speaking about and I would even say God forbid because if we understand parenting and we understand the god-given role that we were entrusted with really we're there for our children we're meant to provide for them we provide them with everything and one of the things we provide them with is safety not just physical safety but emotional safety and the best description I have for describing a person who's emotionally safe is a friend however and I want to make this extremely extremely at the risk of even belaboring the point explicitly clear we are not meant to turn to our children to provide our emotional needs so we shouldn't be looking to our children for emotional safety and unfortunately that does happen sometimes and it's actually I don't like to use shocking words and I and I'm using this word very very carefully but it's actually an Insidious form of abuse when and there are terms for it in the clinical World though they call it enmeshment or parentification parentification of a child where a parent flips the Paradigm and they try to use the child as a nurturer and a caregiver or even a surrogate spouse in some cases and and and that's terribly destructive and every time I give my parenting course I have a parenting course uh which bar at this point close to 2,000 parents have taken and uh whenever we speak about this idea it's uh I think it's week four when this idea eventually comes up and I mention this idea of being there for our children to Prov provide emotional support for them but they're not there to provide emotional supp support for us and I mentioned that when when parents do that how uh how damaging that is not only to the parent child relationship but to a child's basic sense of security and it it's a it's a wound an emotional wound that they they need to overcome later in life um whenever I'll mention that there will always be right away right after class four five six depending on how big the group is uh parents will come over and say that's you're describing me that's my childhood that's precisely what happened to me I was parentified I was used by my parent to give my parent validation and and I realize now how much that affected me so I want to make it very clear Hashem gave us a mitzvah and when Hashem gives us a Mitzvah he gives us he backs up all of the the resources that we're going to need in order to follow through on that Mitzvah so we lean on Hashem so that our children can lean on us we're not meant to ask our children to validate us our children's job is not to make us feel safe or to tell us that we're good or give us approval that will be a a an inversion of the entire parent child relationship and I just want to make that very very clear that we're not going to do that that is taking we are meant to provide for our children not to take from them but what I do want to make clear is that being the provider of emotional stability and trust and safety in our children's lives that's not just something that makes life more pleasant it's a deal breaker it's it's I would almost say it's impossible to be your child if you don't do that and I guess that's that's what I want to talk about that bonding with our children is a prerequisite to teaching them how to live I think it was Teddy Roosevelt doesn't matter who it was because it's true who said uh people don't care what you know until they know that you care hey this is shase tab you were just watching a clip 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