True Friend?

So I am one of those moms that will accept friend request from my children’s friends and classmates because I want to know about them.  I want to know about the people who are part of my children’s lives day in and day out.  It is an eye opening way to see whom you want and don’t want your children hanging around with.  I have seen so many post these days about “true friends” and the lack thereof.  It makes me sad for them and makes me wonder what happened.

Have we risen this generation to be so competitive, self-centered or untrusting that they don’t know how friendship works?  Are their requirements so rigid that they are not accepting of others personality traits that may be dissimilar to their own? 

A “trust no one” stepfather influenced my husband during part of his youth.  You can’t trust anyone has been a resounding theme I have heard often over the years.  Truthfully, as we age, it is easy to understand why we feel that way but is it fair to put those feelings on our children?  We want to protect them and keep them from making the mistakes we did, but haven’t many of those mistakes made us who we are today?  We tell our children, a real friend wouldn’t do such and such.  But they are all kids learning how to be real friends and some of them learning from people who never learned how to be one themselves.

I love that I have been blessed with more true friends than my fair share and I hope that they would say I have been a true friend to them.  I wish there was a tried and true method for friendship, but it is a gift, not something that happens because you want it.  I want it greatly for some of the youth in my life and pray that in time it will come to them for there is nothing better than a true friend.  They are everywhere you look, looking for the same thing.  I don’t know how we as parents can help, but I hope we are indeed helping and not hurting.

Just a thought. 

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.” – Jim Morrison