Open Communication with your Children

This morning while getting ready to head to Grammy's house for the day I had put on a movie for my daughter (namely one of the old school care bear movies that I loved as a child). In the movie they were talking about best friends and how they are always there for each other. My daughter while watching this paused and turned to my husband and said "my mama is my best friend!" which I love that she feels this way but it brought up the fear that I have that as she grows older she will stop feeling that same way. And I can imagine many of you thinking or saying to yourselves that I am not supposed to be her friend but her parent. My response to this is that yes, I will always be a parent first, but I want my children to be able to come to me about ANYTHING and know that I will always be on their side. While I am close with my mother now I never grew up being close to my parents and had great difficulty in talking to them about problems I was having and just about everything other than the grades I was getting in school. It was so bad between my father and I that for my 15th birthday my father and step mother took me on a dinner cruise not knowing that I hated water and got sea sick, that I couldn't talk to them when I first got asked out, when I had my first break up, or even when I just needed someone there for me when the custody battle over my sister and I became just too much for me. I don't want my children to feel that way and am not sure if that's something that I can control or if it is in my children's hands or a combination of the two. I try to take time out to talk to my daughter every night and if she is away from me at any point I ask her about what she did and if she had fun. My son is too young to speak as of yet but I plan to do the same with him. When they do something wrong I try to talk to them about it rather then screaming or sending them to a timeout with no explanation. What do you do to keep communication open with your children?