Imagine that you’ve just gotten into a big fight with your best friend and you want to share it with someone; who is that someone?  Is it your parents? A friend? A boyfriend or a girlfriend? If you are a typical teen, whether or not you share it with your parents depends on the situation and your relationship with them.

As young children, parents are like superheroes. We look to our parents for guidance, for direction, for pretty much everything. However, when children begin to go through adolescence, this dependence of parents wanes as teens want to have their own freedom and hang out with friends.

Adolescence is the time when teens seek independence for themselves. That independence includes separation from family, forming friends outside of the family, exploring their spiritual beliefs, and exploring sexual choices. One of the ways teens usually try out the concept of independence is by cutting of communication with their parents, usually their mom, according to a parenting website called “Piedmont Parent.” Teens often don’t want their parents to be around friends due to a variety of factors including their parents’ age, how they dress, and, most importantly, how they act.

Teens’ shutting off of their parents is a natural part of growing up. Ms. Kimber, a parent to 5 children, recalls her own children distancing themselves from her around the age of 14.  “At 14 or 15 years old, kids begin to see friendship as an important piece of their lives.”  Ms. Kimber recalls.

To help keep the lines of communication open, Ms. Kimber would make her house into a “teen hangout spot” for her children’s friends so that her children will feel comfortable for bringing their friends home and to keep those lines of communication open as well. Communication is the key to being close with your teens. Ms. Kimber recalls, “We let my kids be aware of certain things (related to) being an adolescent.”

While the desire to figure out one’s true identity by doing things on one’s own is natural, parents often struggle with letting kids go.  For these parents, the inability to let their kids go or have some freedom causes them to make poor choices, including acting like they are their child’s best friend or becoming a parent who wants to control their kids nonstop. Ms. Kimber believes that parents should be wary about adolescence and act like a parent. ‘Parents should be parents. They need to make and keep family values in place. They need to be wary about adolescence,” she says.

The primary problem with parents trying to be more of a friend than a parent as their kids begin to pull away from them is that parents are acting in direct contrast to what teens are supposed to be doing-seeking independence.

A parent from the website “Modern Mom” states that parents should be a child’s parents and not their friends. “They should model good decision-making, model kind behavior, keep the family safe, and provide consistency in a child’s life so a child can feel safe and comfortable and able to handle life’s challenges along the way. A parent should also be the one person that a child feels he cant talk to about anything, while at the same time being the person who sets the rules, boundaries, and expectations for behaviors.” Of course there are other parents who disagree with this viewpoint and want to seem like the cool parent towards their kids.

Some parents don’t understand the fact that being super close to their child can cause their teen to want to be more independent from them.

This over-closeness of parents causes teens to stop communicating with them and to be even closer with their friends. Sophomore Phoebe Iloanya discusses how controlling and close her parents are with her. “I stopped talking to my parents in 7^th grade because they started to become annoying due to the fact they constantly kept controlling me and telling me what to do,” says Iloanya. “I just need a certain amount of space from them. It’s not that teens don’t like their parents; they just want them to be less controlling of their lives and let teens explore the world on their own.

Of course how much teens talk to their parents depends on many factors, but one factor- gender- plays a key role. According to a study conducted by Child Trends, 40% of girls and 31% of boys have a better relationship with their mothers than their fathers, while 40% of boys and 34% of girls have a better relationship with their fathers than their mothers. Girls are closer with their moms because moms can relate to events that teens are going through, like wearing make-up, needing boyfriend advice, handling drama with friends, and other factors. Boys and fathers can relate through sports and other manly activities.

Overall, teens want to explore the world and see things with their own eyes without having their parents holding their hand along the way. Of course teens still reply on their parents, but they also want to be independent. Teens aren’t always going to be teens forever, and without their parents letting go of them, they will never be able to explore the world.