What damage to your self occurs when you see a parent as a BFF?

If your parent is helpful to you but not too controlling, then it’s beneficial. Hopefully she offers guidance to you as you make your way through life.

Parents are parents, not friends. One can be friend;y with parents, but the relationship is inherently different from a friendship.

There’s a lot of negativity surrounding the idea of parents as friends, because when parents are too friendly with their kids and afraid to discipline (i.e. afraid to be a parent), their kids may lose respect for them and they become ineffective as parents.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with being friendly with your kids, especially when they become adults and are no longer dependent on you. I consider my parents friends and I do things with them that I would do with other friends. They’re always going to be my parents and I’m always going to be their “baby”, so the relationship is of course inherently different. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an adult who has a friendly relationship with their parents.

I know some people who call their parents on special days out of obligation and otherwise have no relationship with them. I am glad that is not my situation. I’ve always been close to my parents and the friendly nature of our relationship is part of that.

The only issue I can think of where a child considers their parent as a BFF is if it is driven by some sort of internal need. This might include attention, favoritism, love, recognition, support, money, sharing of drugs…the list could go on. The driving factor creates a case of manipulation.

My concern is more with the parent who wants to be the BFF of their child, which @zenvelo and @DominicY mentioned.

To answer the other question, yes, it is okay to be friends with your parents once you are an adult and are living on your own. After Dad died, Mom and I took several vacations together because we had the same interests. We really bonded on a different level than we had when I was growing up.

Relationship with parents is actually always impacting our relationship with everyone else, especially close relationships, and when it comes to parent-child relationship, I think it’s best to be independent from parents. If that’s hard, then we can try to move farther along that way.
So to answer this question, I guess one can try to observe himself/ herself. Is he’ she independent when he’ she treats parents as BFF? If the answer is positive, then congratulations it’s very precious relationship and parents you have; otherwise, there’s always the option to try to be more independent and rely on ourselves