Pink T-shirts and Unclear Boundaries

Sometimes things get mixed up that aren't supposed to get mixed up. Your white T-shirt comes out of the laundry pink. The tomato sauce runs into the salad.

I want to use these metaphors to consider some tricky aspects of parenting young adults.

Like when you feel like you're losing yourself in the washing machine of your relationship with your young adult child and coming out a different colour than you intended. Or when you’re the lettuce on the plate being controlled and submerged by their tomato sauce outbursts and/or silences.  

You feel like you can’t be authentically who you are in the presence of who they are.

The technical term for this is differentiation, which began for us when we were babies and we realized that we have our own hands. When we were teenagers, we differentiated by distancing ourselves from our parents, contradicting everything they said and trying on different social identities (like when I decided to take up smoking to be cool, which only lasted on night, thank you thank you thank you to the guy who dissuaded me).

As adults, we are still differentiating ourselves: “I'm a teacher. I'm a conservative. I’m a dog person. I'm a volunteer. I'm a foodie.” It's generally easy to differentiate ourselves from our acquaintances, neighbors and colleagues. Their views are their views; their habits are their habits.

Where it gets tricky, where it’s sometimes hard for us to even see it, is in our closest relationships. That's the arena in which a difference of opinion feels more like a threat than an invitation to explore and learn from one another. That’s when we react – or overreact. 

Take a moment to recall some recent interactions. 

When your teenager does something that you would never do, or something you explicitly asked them not to do, or when they argue with you and endorse viewpoints contrary to how they’ve been raised, how do you react? If it was captured on a video, how would it show you moving? What would you be saying? What tone, gestures and facial expressions would we see? 

What are your most common reactive habits when you’ve got differences with your big kid and your autopilot takes over? Yelling, crying, lecturing…?_______ 

How do these actions reinforce your sense of threat/ offence and prevent you from staying grounded and curious?  _______ 

The problem I often hear from mothers is that they don’t know how to hold space for their teen’s emotional state without shifting their own emotional state. They absorb their big kid’s emotions, like the T-shirt absorbs the red dye. And they feel like they don't have any control over their reaction; it just takes them over like the tomato sauce submerges the lettuce. 

Picture it like this: the red and white T-shirts are swishing around with no clear separation, there’s no solid boundary between the lasagna and the salad on the plate. And the boundaries between the parent and young adult are permeable and unclear. 

Here are some signs of murky boundaries and that you might be enmeshed with your teenager:

·         You can’t tell the difference between your own emotions and theirs. If they feel angry, anxious or upset, you feel angry, anxious or upset, possibly even more so than they do.

·         You tell them what they should and shouldn’t do without being asked.

·         You imagine you need to rescue them from their emotions.

·         When there’s a conflict, you feel anxiety, fear, or a compulsion to fix the problem or convince them to agree with you.

·         You try to get them to feel certain feelings and avoid other feelings. 

·         You make decisions based on what you think will please them or, at least, not make them blow up or fall apart.

·         You take responsibility for meeting their needs, even when it is harmful to yourself.

·         You don’t believe it’s ok for you to be happy when they’re unhappy.

·         You believe the relationship requires you to sacrifice and endure; you say ‘yes’ when you don’t want to.

·         You find it difficult to express your own preferences when you’re around them.

·         Your self-esteem is contingent upon how the relationship is going.

You might recognize some of these signs in yourself. And that’s good because it's only when we can see and name our unwanted habits that we can break them. What's important here is self-awareness and self-compassion. 

Reflecting on one of these signs, in what kinds of situations does it happen? What blurs your differentiation from your child? _______ ~ 

When you have a clear sense of differentiation from them, you have both autonomy and closeness in your relationship. You're not afraid of losing yourself and coming out of the wash pink, and you're not afraid of being controlled and submerged by tomato sauce. 

You're standing in your values, navigating disagreement, upholding firm but flexible boundaries, expressing your opinions and respecting views that are different from your own.  

You have a deep sense of your Self that you carry with you.

And even if it's never explained to your teenager, they feel it. On some level, they respect and admire this about you and seek to emulate it. Your authenticity draws their heart toward yours.

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