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 family, you thought you should wall off parts of yourself to maintain a sense of safety and belonging.
At that tender age, you may have concluded that you should say yes as often as possible, that you aren’t smart enough to make good decisions, that your opinion doesn’t matter, etc.
It may also be true that the skill of creating healthy boundaries wasn’t modelled for you. Many of us grew up with parents who just made-up rules that we were expected to follow (or else). But rules aren’t boundaries.
And so now, as an adult, the prospect of setting a boundary may generate a sense of confusion and dread.
Let’s say that your teenager has been coming home too late on school nights. When you think about setting a curfew, your heart races, your belly churns and your throat tightens. That’s the sense of threat to your belonging that was stored in your bones and cells long ago and now it’s surfacing.
Whether the walls you put up as a child were little white picket strategies or 10-ft-thick defense systems, you may now be hearing the same conclusions you made back then, “You should say yes as often as possible, you’re not smart enough to make good decisions, your opinion doesn’t matter, etc.”
It’s no wonder then, feeling threatened, that you hesitate to assert a curfew. I mean, no one wants to approach their teenager when they feel something fundamental within themselves is at risk…
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What happens next for many parents is brushing it off — “I should lighten up. It’s not that bad. It’s good that she has friends.” — and feeling guilty about wanting to set the boundary at all.
If you think of a time when you didn’t follow through in setting a boundary, you might have been telling yourself that it wasn’t worth the hassle. That they’d overreact and you’d end up being the wicked witch and having to coax them back to civility. And so, why bother?
Consider what might have been below the surface. What was that triggered part of you really trying to avoid? What childhood confusion or sense of danger was threatening to bubble up? See if you can name it right now.
There’s no shame in this and there’s nothing wrong with you. None of us are expert at stating or upholding our boundaries. I screw this up pretty regularly. Fears come up and we back down. That’s being human.
And when we react to this fear, we may temporarily feel safe, but there are also some big costs.
The Costs of Not Setting Boundaries
1. Backing away from boundary-setting eliminates the opportunity for reaching mutual understanding with your kid and you miss out on the situation-by-situation building of a relationship. Clearly, they can’t honour your boundaries unless they know what they are and understand why they’re important to you. And you cannot collaborate if you don’t put your cards on the table.
What would you need to be able to do to genuinely collaborate? Collaborate: “to work jointly to produce or create something, to work with someone else for a special purpose.”
2. When we’re dishonest with ourselves and our kids about what we need and what we’re comfortable with, we undermine the trust in the relationship. Whether that’s white-lying, hidden agendas or holding back your truth, falseness weaves through the fabric. It might not be overt (“I don’t trust you”) and yet, you both sense a need for caution. Cards are close to the chest, hoping to avoid conflict.
But trying to keep the peace is fruitless; conflict with our kids is inevitable. What’s more important is stepping into honesty — even though it feels scary not knowing what will happen — because it’s in this pure and vulnerable place that true connection is built.
What can you put in place for yourself that will support you to give voice to your needs and limits?
What posture can you take to bolster your truthfulness?
What can you trust as you step into fuller honesty with yourself and others?
3. When I tolerate a certain behaviour for longer than I can actually handle (given the resources I can access at that time), I end up feeling resentment. That’s my go-to, not speaking up and then blaming someone else (wince, blush).
What about you? When you let things go past what you’re ok with, what arises — fury, depression, feeling responsible for their emotions and reactions, guilt for enabling their unacceptable behaviors, embarrassment at having let yourself down…? And how does that drain you?
4. When you avoid setting a boundary, you might catch yourself saying that you don’t even know what your limits are. Part of you is afraid of letting those truths be known.
What does a part of you assume will happen if you state how you want to be treated?
In what ways can you allow yourself to recognize what you do and don’t want as uniquely you and totally acceptable and meant to be expressed in this world?
How can you practice that in low-stakes situations? (Hit Reply if you want some help with this.)
5. When we fail to make our boundaries crystal clear to our loved ones, we disrespect their capability to consider and respond to them. We rob them of learning, practicing and making their contribution to the development of the relationship.
Just as you did in your youth, your kids have a fundamental need to feel connection with you and, even if they can’t articulate it, a deep desire to meet you where you can love each other in a way that fills both your hearts. That’s the definition of a healthy boundary.
6. Finally, I would say, from personal experience, that avoiding boundary-setting sacrifices some of the light that we’re meant to shine.
This has been a long-time work for me: resisting what feels like an imperative to take up as little space as possible and keep quiet about what I want. I have put my kids’ needs and preference above my own far more than I want to admit to you. But then I come back to this: I want my kids to assert their boundaries confidently and comfortably. And so, I must learn how to do it and model it.
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Having boundaries is one of the ways that you live in your integrity. You hold space for yourself to connect to your essence, intuition and divine wisdom — space to evolve.
As such, your boundaries are sacred.
Remember that, if you tend to steer clear of setting boundaries in a couple of areas of your life, it’s an outdated habit of your body, mind and heart, a habit grown from the fear of not knowing what will happen if you allow your truest needs and limits to be seen. And habits can be changed.
Respecting your own boundaries is self-love in action, hearing the beat of your own heart and honouring the worth of your soul.
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