Is It OK to Be Friends With Your Teen? Experts Weigh In

As a Gen X Goth mom who constantly clashed with my own parents, I’ve always been unflinchingly open and aesthetically permissive with my daughter,  especially once she became a teen. I figured honesty and freedom would strengthen our bond. And yet I was always clear: I was her parent, not her peer. I agree with Kim Kardashian (a phrase I never thought I’d type) that letting adolescents express themselves shouldn’t be confused with trying to be their BFFs.

But would being friends with our teens be so bad? According to Barbara Greenberg, a teen, child and family psychologist who ran an inpatient adolescent unit at a private psychiatric hospital for 21 years, the short answer is yes.

“A parent is supposed to provide structure and be an authority figure,” she says. “You’re supposed to set the limits so your child can push up against you — that’s a developmental task. Friends don’t tell you to do your laundry, be home at midnight or drive carefully. Are friends and authority figures mutually exclusive? I think so.”

Greenberg says the impulse for parents to befriend their teens has “existed as long as there have been mothers and daughters.” But Judith Smetana, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who specializes in adolescent-parent relationships, thinks it may be more pervasive these days.

“It’s good to have warm, close, responsive relationships with your children,” she says. “But friendship is defined as egalitarian. There’s give-and-take, mutual disclosure and so on. It’s great if kids want to disclose to you, but it would be weird for parents to talk about their sex life with their kids. When parents start revealing things about themselves, it’s slippery. Your child should not be your confidant.”

But What About Being Your Teen’s Confidant?

Letting them share with you, on the other hand, is a great goal. Of course, getting your teens to do that can be challenging — even the ones who broadcast everything on social. But there are tricks for getting them to open up without sliding into inappropriate territory.

“One of the best things is, when they talk, you listen without judgment,” says Greenberg. “Always take the temperature. I remember asking my daughter when she was a teenager, ‘Do you want me to just listen, or do you want to hear what I think?’ It’s validating and respectful.” Parents should also practice their poker face. “You really have to control your emotionality,” Greenberg continues. “Because once you start showing how emotional you are, you’re giving kids the message that you can’t handle what they’re saying. So even if you have to fake it, try your best to remain calm.”

Smetana concurs. “Teens have a lot of concealment strategies, changing the topic, avoidance and so on. So parents may actually not be as much in the know as they think they are. But one thing the literature shows conclusively is that having a trusting response helps facilitate disclosure. If you flip out, they’re going to be reluctant to tell you stuff.”

Another trick to getting the conversation going: pose indirect questions. “Instead of asking, ‘Did you smoke weed at the party? Was there a lot of drinking?’ Start with, ‘How was the drive? Was so-and-so there?’ Go through a side door rather than the front door,” Greenberg says. “Even asking, ‘How was your day?’ is too direct, because the day hasn’t ended and maybe they haven’t processed it yet.”

Relationships Can Evolve — With Caution

The teenage years encompass wildly different developmental stages, so the parent-child relationship does evolve over time. Yet even as they reach adulthood (18 in the eyes of the law, if not mom or dad!), parents should be wary of immediately trying to segue into friendship.

“In early adulthood, the nature of the relationship shifts,” acknowledges Greenberg. “But you should let the child take the lead.” Smetana adds that when a child moves out, to college or their own home, that changes the dynamic significantly. “Parents can still be concerned about what they do, but they don’t have the same authority,” she says. “Hopefully, there will be a willingness to become more like friends. But I think there are still some boundaries.”

Sometimes I wonder if parent-child friendships can ever happen. I’m middle-aged and my 90-year-old mother still calls to ask if I’m dressed appropriately for the weather! But as Smetana says, it’s paramount to let the child — in this case me — take the wheel, and then a friendship can blossom. “At your age, you don’t expert your mother to say, ‘Put on your galoshes,'” she says with a laugh. “But you have the power to say, ‘Okay, mom, you’ve been saying that for 50 years. Enough!'”