Setting boundaries is foggy territory for many parents. As their kids become independent and separate from them, they wrestle with their concepts of connection, protection and guidance. It calls us to be looking within and adjusting our ways of seeing ourselves and our roles. How do you know when you need a boundary with your teenager or young adult child? How do you know if you’re over-reacting, exaggerating, being too sensitive, are caught up in your own stuff… or that you

If you have difficulty setting boundaries with your teens, you may have grown up in a home in which your attempts to set boundaries were unsuccessful. Perhaps kids having boundaries was outside of your family’s spoken or unspoken rules . If you said No, you were ignored or punished. If you tried to make a decision for yourself, you were corrected, undermined or shamed. And since, as a child, one of the main components of survival is ensuring a sense of belonging in your famil

Parenting is a long road and sometimes it overwhelms us, drains our energy and takes us off our center. So today, I'd like to offer you 20 minutes of peace and grounding. These are guided meditations I recorded in response to my readers' wonderings, struggles and requests to bring you back to your center and your most heartfelt parenting intentions. Deepening Your Acceptance Of Your Teenager/Young Adult Child | Lori K Walters ( insighttimer.com ) Parents Bridging The Distanc

My kids recently asked if we could look through photos from when they were little and we lived in Yellowknife. I love looking at those first bike rides and the refrigerator boxes made into spaceships – it brings on such a warm feeling for our happy-little-family days. Looking back 15 years, it took all of us to piece together some of the contexts and timelines - each of our memories were holding a piece of it, with some of our memories reinforcing or contradicting each other.

Mama, when you’re anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated and confused about parenting your teen, your nervous system might be telling you lies... ok maybe not lies, but it's definitely creating illusions, guesses and assumptions. Here are some I’ve heard recently from parents who, like you, are doing their best parenting young adults. Please read with compassion. "I feel uncomfortable about my daughter’s decision. I just know it's wrong". She's 24 years old, living on her own

It's so hard some days, parenting teens and young adults, some months… the seemingly constant backtalk, accusation and opposition, the equally painful eye rolls and silences. You try everything you can think of. You're firm and it pushes them away. You give in and it doesn’t bring them any closer. You cry and they think you’re pathetic. You yell and they think you’re mean. And you make new strategies: When he starts yelling, I’ll take three deep breaths. When she heads for he

In my twenties, I lived on a communal organic sheep farm where we used electric fences to keep the woolly ones grazing on the right pastures. I was careful about never touching the wires, of course, but one evening, I accidently brushed my arm against the fence... I was shocked, both literally and figuratively. And I felt a jolt through my forearm that I’ll never forget. When my kids became teens, I felt something very similar to that electric shock when my youngest would pus

It goes something like this: You’ve asked your teen a thousand times to change out the garbage bag when it’s full. You walk into the kitchen in the morning and start cooking breakfast, only to discover the garbage can overflowing with the remains of his late-night snacks. You’re immediately annoyed: “That little jerk. He’s so thoughtless, disrespectful, defiant... Why won’t he do such a simple little job?” Then he stumbles into the kitchen, asks what’s for breakfast and you e

On the west coast of Canada, we had an historic “double bomb storm”. Twenty hours of 50 km/h winds, crashing waves, severe downpours, power outages and downed trees all caused by the lowest central pressure system ever recorded in the Pacific Northwest. I had the extra blankets, candles and flashlights ready. It reminds me of a client, Arden, who described bracing herself for big waves of emotions rushing in at her. When her teen was upset, it was BIG and Arden filled with p

I haven’t met a single parent who don’t wish that their teenager would listen to them more attentively. Yes, there were the years and years of them not hearing you the first or second of third time you said to pick up their shoes or that you really have to leave by 7:30. But beyond that, as they mature, there is the desire to share more of your life with your kids - your challenges and fears, personal triumphs and what matters deeply to you. It’s one of the things you’ve look

You feel triggered. Your heart starts beating faster, your shoulders rise, you breath gets shallow, your vision goes fuzzy... And then you can’t remember where you are, what you were going to do or how to regulate yourself. We’ve all been there. It’s like you’re on a fast-moving train that you can’t stop. You’re already locked in. The decision has been made for you. A voice is saying, “You can’t do anything but blow up. You’re already there. You might as well go ahead and get

We had some unseasonably warm weather last week but now it has returned to the normal spring pattern on the west coast – rain. I’m not a big fan of rain and I’ve been working on my attitude toward it since I moved here 3 years ago. I’m developing my appreciation for the spectacular gardens, the lushness in the forest and, with the constant possibility of a water shortages, I’m happily imagining the reservoir filling. But when I woke up this morning, I heard the rain pounding

Several years ago, a friend and I went to Scotland. We wanted lots of freedom, so I said I’d rent a car– even though I’d never driven on the left-hand side of the road. It went well most of the time, camping and taking the back roads, but when we got into Edinburgh, I got stuck on the inside lane of a huge urban roundabout, my brain having a hard time figuring out how to drive clockwise and merge left. It was super stressful. My friend was watching for an opening and, in a mo

Perhaps you know this scenario: Your teenager’s bedroom door is usually closed and, when they emerge, they're almost always wearing headphones, and any conversation is brief and choppy. The chasm you feel between you two has you pressuring yourself to make conversation. So, you try different strategies – asking about their day, knowing enough about their music or shows to have something intelligent to say, placing yourself hopefully in the living room and, well, trying not to

All of us have times when we wish that our parenting job wasn't how it is. That it wasn't this difficult, wasn't this scary, this heartbreaking, this exhausting. As a parenting coach, I've worked with a number of parents who have found themselves suspended in the wishing. They feel like they're caught in a gray fog, somewhere between wishing it was different and knowing that it's real and wanting to be present for their child. They're turning left and right, facing forward, f

You had plans about how you were going to parent. Damn good plans... And then one day, it’s your kid who’s getting in fights, shutting you out of their lives, struggling with ADHD or using drugs. You didn’t have a plan for that, did you? You were going to do all the right things to avoid that messiness. It catches you by surprise. You land in new territory. And you’re unprepared. You fumble around trying to figure it out what to do. You look in the mirror and say, “I should k

How to address your feelings, assumptions and wounds related to their anxiety.

I stand in awe of peace negotiators, restorative justice leaders and dispute mediators. They bring people back together again by teaching them how to listen to each other. Really listen. To empathize and replace stereotypes with understanding. To have their emotions and opinions heard. To experience the hope of common ground. To see each other as humans with dreams and fears and things they love. Listening is that powerful. It gives us experiences of our shared humanity.

My conversations with my sister have a pattern. They always begin with me answering her list of questions (she’s a journalist). Once the “interview” is done, then I can ask her what's new and gradually bring it down into what’s important to her these days. It’s a well-worn pattern. The truth is that we’re all creatures of habit. Our amygdalae love it when everything is familiar and predictable. And that applies to our communications as well. Think about the patterns of commun

When you get into the car and realize you’ve forgotten your phone, you head back into the house trying to remember where you set it down. You retrace your steps backwards from the hallway to the kitchen, to the bathroom and… you find it. When you’re parenting your teen, peace sometimes is to be found by retracing your steps back to your own adolescence and finding a healthy way to finally express the emotions that you had to suppress back then. How our Adolescent Wounds get s

When you make a fresh salad, some of the best parts fall to the bottom of the bowl. All you see are the greens, but you know that there are avocado chunks, cherry tomatoes, almonds and pieces of feta or tofu farther down. There’ no doubt about what to do if you’re at home – dig down and get all the goodness onto your plate. Now imagine you’re at a potluck with friends or a wedding banquet. Are you still willing to dig down when you don’t know how others will react? When yo

I rarely meet a parent who denies having felt some guilt about how they’ve raised their kids. I hear things like, “I wasn’t there enough. I wasn’t affectionate enough. I said hurtful things, yelled, hit, spanked and blamed. I was a bad role model. I didn’t take the time to understand my children. I pushed too hard / didn’t push enough.” The way I see it, a certain level of guilt is natural when our hearts are so fully engaged and we’re committed to doing our best in a job we’

“When my daughter gets anxious, I can feel her stress and fear as if it were my own. My chest gets tight and my breath gets shallower. I get caught up in the whole atmosphere of tension and I’m unable to support her in the way she needs.” “I hate it when he gets upset and mopes around. I try to stay in my own lane but, before I know it, I’m as miserable as he is. Even when he's not at home, I feel it. But I don’t want his moods to dictate mine. It makes it worse for both of

Your young adult child is gradually moving out into the world on their own. Of course , you have fears. How could you watch the news and not worry about what's in store for them? How could you see rental rates rising daily and not worry if good housing will be attainable? How could you witness the growing social inequalities and unrest and not feel afraid about the dangers they’re surrounded by? As a parenting coach, I know you're scared. Of course, you are. And yet, it som