Can we be friends with our children?

It’s pretty sure that in previous generations parents were distant from their children. They took care of their practical needs for food and shelter, but as the issue of survival was a lot more intense, especially in rural areas, there was a greater emotional distance.
Possible for this reason, most parents today want to be “friends” with their children. It helps, but this? Most likely not.
Children need to feel that their parents are there for them, close them and open in communication, but through their role. Knowing that their parents are not “immediate” like the same, that it is more “strong” of the same, and for this reason they can to protect them, to provide them with security, to be there when you need help.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that parents can become despotic or violent in any way, or that you have to keep distance them away from their children. However, the preservation of their role is highly important, since it allows them to set limits, which are essential for the healthy psycho-emotional development of their child. At the same time, developing an environment characterized by love and acceptance for their child, acknowledging the feelings, we allow the children to feel that there is a stable framework that allows and promotes the growing, but also provides the necessary safety when they need it.
This is important to make each parent is to spend time with the child in activities that help to build a close relationship, in a friendly environment. Through this relationship, the child has the necessary space to share their feelings and to relate in a healthy way with the parent, but to reach the extreme point of this relationship is an obstacle to the creation of relationships with peers and captures it in the family system.
Moreover, it is surely desire of each parent, the child to develop new relationships with friends and peers, from which we may draw joy and satisfaction, and to develop social skills.
The role of the parent is to provide the child, through his own behavior and its function as a model, all the tools to develop healthy relationships both in childhood and in later adult life.