Chapter Five: The Relationship With Your Child

Parents, here's a news flash -- it's a bad idea to be friends with your kid. You are the authority figure. You will never get the respect you deserve as long as you try to be your kid's friend.

If this is the kind of relationship you want to have with your kid, you won't get it by being their friend.

Because you need to remember one very important thing: Kids are mean. They're jerks. And they go from friend to friend to friend based on their mood, what they look like, and what kind of shoes they're wearing every day. They're fickle. Kids suck. So understand right away that you cannot be your child's friend.

 You have to build a respectful relationship with your kids. I mean, by all means, have fun with them for sure. Read/watch Harry Potter with them, support their extracurricular interests, generally be nice to them. I mean, they're your kids. You love them. But what it comes down to is that your job is to provide the best for your child so that he or she grows up to be a functioning, decent, and productive member of society, because you love them. That is your job. And if that's not why you are having children, you shouldn't be having children (to be discussed further in a later chapter).

If you want to raise your kids well, you have to set boundaries, like my parents did. Now, I love my parents. I love hanging out with them when I'm home, in fact I spend most of my nights off hanging out with my parents. My mom says I'm her best friend. I think that's weird. But they are not my friends. They are my parents. When I screw up, they scare the crap out of me. I am always scared of my parents. Out of respect. But that doesn't mean I don't go to them for help when I need it, I always do. It's because I know they have my best interests at heart, and unlike a friend, they will tell me what I did wrong, how I can fix it, and lecture me so that hopefully I don't make the same mistake twice. That's how parents should be.

If I have clothing on that looks bad on me, whether it makes me look fat or stupid, my mother will let me know. She will say "No Bean, you are not walking out of the house like that." It ticks me off, but in the end I know that she wants the best for me, and she won't let me look sloppy or like trash.

This is how girls look who have their mothers as friends:

"Oh yeah girlfran!!! You look so cute!"

This is the epitome of a decent young woman who wasn't friends with her mother:

So classy.

The thing about parents who want to be friends with their kid, is that their goal is for their child to be cool. (Because muffin tops are cool?) You're not supposed to want your kid to be cool. That's not your job. Cool is not cool. Look at Jackie Kennedy. Do you think her mother cared about her being cool? NooOOoOoOOooo... she wanted her daughter to be successful. And do you know what she did? She married the future President of the United States. And then she married a billionaire. And she raised two successful, eloquent children. And she persevered through everything thrown her way. She was the most amazing woman ever to live. How COOL was she?!

Now back to muffin top girl. Where's she going? I don't even know.

If you're trying to make your kid cool, that's just sad. How can your kid respect you? Like, if that were me, I'd be like "Wow, my parent is lame. He/she needs to get a freaking life and stop trying to live through mine." Seriously. Your kid depends on you whether they recognize that or not. Hopefully they do, but they should if you establish early on that you are not there to be their friend. And that is all I have to say about that.

If you don't listen to me, this will be your future:

If you DO listen to me, you should expect something similar to this: