Creating Healthy Boundaries for Parents
By Laura Chamberlin, FSSFC
Badass Boundaries and Collaborative Communication Trainer
When we take the time to set healthy boundaries with our children and teach them how to set healthy boundaries for themselves, we raise people who know how to advocate for themselves, have respect for others, and bring a sensible, collaborative, and well-balanced approach to life.
This approach can turn a crying child into one who learns how to share, ask for what they want, and wait when it’s someone else's turn.
What is a healthy boundary?
A healthy boundary includes being able to identify our own needs, learn how to ask for what we want, and become practiced at the art of negotiation and collaboration.
When we have children, setting healthy boundaries for ourselves and teaching our children through modeling these behaviors, is one of the best parenting skills we can impart.
Photo courtesy of Belle Photography
To set a boundary, we must be able to say both yes and no. Yes is much easier for most people to say. It also means that we get practiced at reading our body's signals because our bodies give us quick information about what is right for us. Our heads get too caught up in thinking about what we should do and what we feel is our duty to do. We miss the fact that our body is telling us it’s not right for us and often let our heads make decisions. When we do things we don’t want to do because we can’t say no, we often end up in a frustrating situation that can become untenable. Boundaries are a key component in learning how to live in a way that is true to ourselves and cultivate empathy and compassion for others.
Recently, a 25-year-old babysitter shared with me that she spent time with a family she used to babysit for when the children were 1 year and 3 years old. Now, the children are 5 and 8 and have “turned into needy and demanding little monsters,” she said cheekily. “How does that happen?” she wanted to know. She wondered, “how did they go from being the sweetest kids to acting demanding, interrupting, and dominating?”.
I smiled in memory of my own learnings. I was well on this way, driven to give my children everything they wanted. I just wanted them to be happy. That can’t be wrong, can it?
It turns out that it can if happiness is the sole motivator. Wanting our kids to be happy while teaching them boundaries, and allowing for natural consequences - that is the magic sauce. That is the combination that makes happy children learn to love themselves internally, which creates mental wellness among many other positives.
A desire for our children to be happy + teaching boundaries + natural consequences = Parenting Magic Sauce.
Let’s take an example.
If I grab a cookie at the checkout stand in the store to appease my screaming toddler I am setting the stage for the child to not only learn that they have the power over their parent, but they also learn that screaming and demanding is the way to get what they want. Do you know any adults that get louder and bigger in order to get their way?
Alternatively, I can lean down to my screaming toddler and say, “I can see how upset you are. I don’t like waiting either. It’s hard, but we will be done soon. Would a hug help?” This is how we can kindly and firmly care for their mood and allow it to happen without trying to fix it. This way we are setting a healthy boundary and they will learn:
That their feelings are validated.
That I agree with them and they aren’t wrong for having feelings.
That their screaming, demanding behavior doesn’t get them a reward.
That there are words to describe their feelings, which encourages them to express their feelings with words, not outbursts.
That everyone in the family has feelings and sometimes we agree. This sets the stage for when we don’t agree (another juicy topic rich with learning lessons that can teach healthy collaboration). It also teaches that everyone’s feelings are important, not just theirs.
That I offered a solution. “Would a hug help?” Which teaches them that there are often solutions to help them in situations that make them uncomfortable.
Soon I will have a child that can stand in line, learn that being bored, or tired of waiting is an experience we can have, and they develop the inner resources to handle it. This one skill will unfold and ripple outward, touching every aspect of their lives as they grow. Imagine the difference this one interaction can make. Now imagine five of these happening per day. That’s a lot of practice that will help solidify these skills.
When we take the time to model these behaviors for our children, we learn patience, we learn to take care of ourselves, we learn how to cooperate with our children, and our partners and our families become rich with potential for acceptance and loving communication. When we have opposing views, we can take that opportunity to teach them how to negotiate. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if we were all practiced in collaboration and negotiation?
Breaking down the sample from above, we are steering away from the cookie to appease and instead leaning into validation, agreement, and balanced power, while learning to make requests and being solution-oriented.
Don’t we all feel better when we have been validated? When we feel validated by those we respect and love we aren’t likely to act out and search for validation externally.
Doesn’t it feel good when people agree with us? Doesn’t it feel so good when our parents agree with us? See us? Empathize with us? That alone helps children to create a stable foundation from which they can develop into mature adults.
When we learn that outbursts aren't the most effective way to get our needs met, but rather we learn to ask for what we want – we avoid the conflict, anger, and frustration that comes when we have needs and don’t know how to ask for what we want in a healthy way.
When we learn that everyone has feelings and needs, it broadens our compassion and empathy, and teaches us that everyone’s needs are important and valuable, even when they disagree with us! This sets the stage for successful negotiations. “You need this, I need that. Let’s figure out how to both get our needs met, rather than the just me/I winner attitude”.
And lastly, when we get practiced at offering solutions, we raise adults that are solution-oriented, and who are likely to stay out of playing the victim, which is the opposite of being solution-oriented. Solution-oriented adults have happier lives because they don’t allow themselves to be stuck in unhealthy situations for long, if at all!
For children, every day is an opportunity to learn healthy boundaries which enrich and enhance their life skills.
I recall the mother of one of my son's friends' saying, “I don’t have time to teach him why I want him to do what I want. I’m the parent. He just has to do what I say.” I respected her choice. She was the parent and gets to parent how she wants, though I watched as her son modeled her behavior. He bullied his classmates and she yelled at him. He picked on kids telling them what to do and calling them names if they didn’t acquiesce. I wondered how this would manifest in him when he became a teenager, and I got a chance to see that many years later. It reaffirmed for me the idea that taking the time when children are young to teach, model, communicate and allow for natural consequences (by setting healthy boundaries) will save lots of heartaches when that child is older.
A boundary is so much more than saying yes or no. When getting practiced at this, it can change the entire dynamic of one’s family. It can turn a chaotic, busy family schedule into something more rewarding and fulfilling because everyone learns how to communicate what they want, and as a unit. They help each other get it. They learn to compromise along the way.
Case Study
Emma was a busy, single mom of her teenage son. She worked full-time and was in a relationship with a man that was retired and had a lot of free time, but he didn’t help raise Emma’s son. She had outgrown both her job and her relationship, but for fear of quitting everything (her head told her to stay, her body was protesting) she kept going to work and stayed in an unloving and unbalanced relationship.
Her son played sports and was always busy at school, doing homework, or playing with his friends. Emma continually asked her son to do his chores and would get so angry when he didn’t. She would lose her temper and start to yell at her son out of pure frustration. The more she yelled, the more he retreated.
Emma was exhausted, unhappy, and stuck. She felt like life was passing by and she was just going through the motions with little joy. After learning about boundaries and collaborative communication, she launched into a journey of change, and one year later, everything was different.
The first thing she did was begin to see that she had needs that weren’t being met and that she was giving more than her fair share at work, in her relationship, and with her son. She started to see that her constant giving to everyone while bypassing her own needs was a set up for a very depleting life.
Emma needed to start by putting her needs into the picture, but she couldn’t figure out what she needed. She was too busy caregiving, so something had to change.
She put in ample notice at work and made a plan to carry herself through financially so she could have a couple of months off of work to spend time with herself and figure out what she wanted. She also set a plan in motion to end her relationship of ten years.
Emma felt so much relief after her job and relationship ended that she started to feel happy for the first time in a long time. With extra time for reflection, Emma realized she had been modeling the kind of parenting she was raised with, the “do it because I told you so” kind of parenting that had negatively impacted her growing up. She started to tune into what she wanted and was beginning to set healthy boundaries for herself. Now she would start to do this with her son.
How? She stopped telling him what to do and she started listening. She started validating his feelings and helping him figure out his feelings by saying things like, “It sounds like what you’re saying is that you felt too tired to stay up late on a school night to play online games with your friends, but you didn’t want to tell them because you didn’t want to hurt their feelings”. “Yes!” He would respond, so excited that Emma understood and helped him to clarify his feelings.
Before long, Emma and her son were enjoying each other's company every day. They laughed and talked for hours. She could tell she was drawing him out by listening and validating, and soon she started gaining his cooperation around the house. Before she knew it, she didn’t even have to ask. He was taking initiative to get things done. When he would occasionally say he was too tired to walk the dog when it was his turn, she would reply, “I know, I get tired of walking the dog too, but it still has to be done.” To which her son would agree and get up and walk the dog.
When I asked Emma what specifically it was that started the trajectory of this change, she said it was being able to create the space in her life to recover and replenish. Once she had the energy, her personal bandwidth increased and she could put effort into creating boundaries for herself and teaching them to her son.
Now, when Emma looks back at how she used to give to her job, relationship and son when she didn’t want to, she can’t believe she used to live that way. “It was exhausting, overwhelming and made me burned out,” she said. Now using healthy boundaries is a mainstay technique she uses to address everything in life.
Reach out to Laura
If you want to learn more about how to address your specific situation, Laura offers a 6-week training interwoven with personal coaching. To inquire send an email to laura@moreofwhatyouwant.net or visit moreofwhatyouwant.net.