Earlier that day, we had been at each other's throats.

The first-born child had shuffled his way home from school and shed his outward selves once through the door. A trail of discarded items - shoes, school bag, water bottle, dirty socks - on the floor led to a sweaty almost-12-year-old with one foot on the stairs, trudging to his bedroom.

"Pick up your socks," I said, pointing an accusing finger at two grey squiggles of knit fabric in the middle of the living room.

"That's where they go," he said. "I am wearing them again later."

"Don't tell me this nonsense. Put them in the laundry basket."

"Why?"

And like a Ferrari going from zero to a hundred, the situation escalated. I yelled. His face went as dark as rain clouds. I said I couldn't deal with him. He marched over, snatched up the socks, rushed to the laundry basket in the kitchen. I heard him slam them into the plastic hamper. He stormed past me and stomped upstairs.

Dirty socks. When will he learn to be neat? Dirty socks. Why couldn't I just chillax?

In the past, I would beat myself up over the ways my son and I rubbed each other the wrong way; the myriad involuntary negative reactions I couldn't control when we were together. We are both hotheads, genetically programmed to be prone to rage and experience it with blinding intensity. The hormonal pre-teen years are not making things easier.

Recently, however, I find comfort in the fact that, come evening, the day's hurts will have scabbed over, and my son seeks me out as I sit alone in the study with my crochet work in my lap.

"Friends?" he will suggest. Casually. Conciliatorily.

Without a word, I'd pass him the television remote control. Flopping down on the yellow couch, next to me, he would cue up that 1990s stalwart sitcom, Friends, on Netflix, and navigate to The One We Hadn't Watched Together Yet.

As the familiar theme song starts playing, his younger brother, eight, would wander in, followed by their dad. Spread on sofa, bean bag and swivel chair, our family would treat ourselves to a couple of episodes.

I used to, if not actually revile, then at least turn my nose up at being a couch potato. Given the choice between watching TV and reading a book, I always picked the latter.

Print seemed so much more rigorous and rewarding. Perhaps it had something to do with my childhood: When I was in kindergarten, my family could afford only a clunky National model (a now-defunct brand), with a metal toggle for an on-off switch and buttons you had to press very hard before you could change the channel. The screen was more often than not full of rolling snow.

Watching anything on this TV was an exercise in frustration. Once, while my mother and I were watching an animated version of Gulliver's Travels, the set went on the blink, or maybe the transmission to our apartment block was interrupted, and I never got to see how the cartoon ended. My mother and I were lying on a mattress together; I was enveloped in her arms. When the programme did not resume, she got up, padded to the kitchen and started cooking dinner. I felt abandoned, in more ways than one. Years later, reading Jonathan Swift's original did nothing to take away the frustration of a six-year-old left permanently in suspense.

So, yes, print was reliable. Books - short of you losing them or ripping out their pages - never let you down. You started and ended them at your own pace, and they stretched your brain in ways you did not expect. I never wanted to let the TV babysit my kids; for them to sit passively in front of the goggle box and receive its subliminal messages.

What I didn't expect, though, was the much-maligned gadget becoming an ally in these pre-teen years and moods. Whatever our differences, our squabbles, the testing of boundaries, the parent's struggle to exert authority or establish guidelines and the child's desire for independence, there is nothing that isn't forgiven by the time Ross and Rachel resume their star-crossed romance, Phoebe and Joey demonstrate their cluelessness and random quirks, Monica displays her obsessive-compulsive side (earning me nudges from my son who thinks I'm as uptight as Mon), and Chandler uses humour as a defence mechanism (I think my menfolk secretly admire his jittery causticity).

In a world where productivity is often upheld as a supreme yardstick of success, I have come to appreciate TV-watching for what it can be: a non-threatening activity that calms the frenetic ticking of our brains, smooths ruffled feathers and bonds those who can't see eye to eye. When Ross cheated on Rachel while they were on a break, all four of us - young and old - clucked our tongues at how childishly each behaved.

"So silly," remarked one son, at the on-screen tantrums, tit-for-tat shenanigans and Rachel's acid tongue.

"It's not her fault," I couldn't help remarking back.

In a different episode, when the friends teased Ross for being a virgin, I took the opportunity to pipe up that there was nothing wrong with that. And then the narrative rolled swiftly along and a potentially long, boring and ineffective moral lecture was side-stepped. But the point had been made.

Dating and sexual intrigue in Manhattan - PG13, you say? Maybe. Maybe not. The comedic situations offer an entry point into various issues that might be relevant as puberty unfolds, laughter opening up spaces for discussion into areas as grey as divorce, queer identity and gender equality.

So no one told me life was going to be this way. After more than a decade of thinking that everything I expose my kids to should be educational and appropriate, I have decided that, sometimes, we just need to relax and allow my son and I to be chums - pure, effortless and simple.

Son, I'll be there for you - like you've been there for me, too.

• The writer is the author of Dream Storeys (Ethos) and co-editor of WeAreAWebsite.com