| There is a balance to be drawn that can be ever shifting depending on the age of your kids, their psycho-emotional development and maturity and the particular subject matter. And there is no "brightline test" for where you draw the line. On one hand, you want to foster open and honest communication and enable your kid to feel that he or she can come to you and discuss anything without you rendering judgement on them as a person and on the other hand, you do not want to "validate" risky or outright dangerous behaviors that should be avoided - you know, "My parent did that and turned out ok, so why shouldn't I give it a try". Or the subject matter may implicate behaviors in which a parent engaged years ago that if revealed would serve to seriously undermine who the parent is today, particularly in the eyes of their kid, and adversely impact on the parent's ability to effectively serve as a mentor to their child.
For us, no subject matter is off limits but we may limit the amount of personal detail we reveal. In such cases, we sometimes have explained to our kids that we are limiting the amount of personal info we are disclosing and why; in other cases we simply exercise proper parental discretion to deflect the conversation away from the details of our own personal behaviors or to limit the details revealed without so disclosing. We have found, however, that where a line is drawn by us on the side of discretion not to reveal certain personal details, an opportunity still presents itself to have a good dialogue about the subject matter and to talk about underlying values and perspectives that have enabled our kids to then make good decisions for themselves. |