Too many people want others to be their friends, but they don't give friendship back. That is why some friendships don't last long. To have a friend, you must learn to be one. You must learn to treat your friend the way you want your friend to treat you.L. earning to be a good. friend means learning three rules: be honest; be generous; be understanding. Honesty is where a good friendship starts. Friends must be able to trust one another. If you do not tell the truth, people usually find out. If a friend finds out that you haven't been honest, you may lose the friend's trust.w.….

Good friends always count on one another to speak and act honestly. Generosity means sharing and sharing makes a friendship grow. You do not have to give your . lunch money or your clothes. Naturally you will want to share your ideas and feelings. These can be very valuable to a friend. They tell your friend what is important to you. By sharing them, you help your friend know you better. Sooner or later everyone needs understanding and helping with a prob: lem. Something may go wrong at school. Talking about the. problem can make it easier to solve. Turning to a friend can be the first step in solving the problem. So to be a friend you must listen and understand. You must try to put yourself in your friend's place so you can understand the problem better. No two friendships are ever exactly alike. But all true friendships have three things in common. If you plan to keep your friends, you must practice honesty, generosity and understanding.

Sometimes, when Mr. Ballmer and his 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, listen to rock music together and talk about pop culture, he remembers his more distant relationship with his parents when he was a teenager. “I would never have said to my mom, ‘Hey, the new Weezer album is really great. How do you like it?’ ” says Ballmer. “There was just a complete gap in taste.” Music was not the only gulf. From clothing and hairstyles to activities and expectations, earlier generations of parents and children often appeared to move in separate orbits (轨道).

Today, the generation gap has not disappeared, but it is getting narrow in many families. Conversations on subjects such as pop culture and sex would not have taken place a generation ago. Now they are comfortable and common. And parent-child activities, from shopping to sports, involve a feeling of trust and friendship that can continue into adulthood.

But family experts warn that the new equality can also result in less respect for parents. “There’s still a lot of strictness and authority on the part of parents out there, but there is a change happening,” says Kerrie, a psychology professor at Lebanon Valley College. “In the middle of that change, there is a lot of confusion among parents.”

Family researchers offer a variety of reasons for these evolving roles and attitudes. They see the 1960s as a turning point. Great cultural changes led to more open communication and at more democratic (民主的) process that encourages everyone to have a say. “It’s not something easily accomplished by parents these days, because life is more difficult to understand or deal with, but sharing interests does make it more fun to be a parent now,” explains Mr. Ballmer.