The years of raising kids in their teens and early twenties are filled with friction and misalignment and sometimes it really drains you dry. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just state your boundary calmly and have it honoured?
Imagine saying, 'This is the way I want to be treated' and then being treated that way.
Asking is definitely where to start and sometimes, when the stars align, making a request is all that’s needed.
“I’m asking you to lower your voice.”
“Can you please have my car back to me by 6 pm on my yoga nights?”
To be clear, these are requests, not boundaries. (We’ll get to the difference in a minute.)
And here's the thing to understand – when you make a request, your kid may or may not agree. They may or may not take the opportunity to meet you in your need for a normal-decibel discussion or to drive unhurriedly to yoga class.
If they agree, hooray! They understand that you want and they're willing to do what you've asked. Phew! How lovely. I mean, you're still going to observe their behaviour over the coming weeks and assess if they’ve met your need or not. But hopefully, it's a done deal.
But if they aren’t receptive to your request, it ends there. You can’t force someone to meet a request if they’re unable or unwilling. Many parents tell me that they’re baffled, hurt and downright incensed that their teen doesn’t 'respect their boundary'. The truth is that they've made a request, not a boundary and, sorry, but their kid doesn't have to agree to it. Nope. (And making the request fifteen more times will not miraculously make them change their mind.)
So, then what?
From Request to Boundaries
While requests are a good place to start, there’s no guarantee that your needs will be met. If your daughter keeps yelling at you or your son only makes the 6 pm car handover half the time, it’s time to cross the bridge from requests to boundaries Here are the ingredients of a boundary:
Honouring your needs.
Caring for the needs of your child and choosing how you do that caring.
Expressing what you are or are not willing to do in concrete, specific and doable terms.
Taking action to uphold your boundary.
Here's an example:
When your daughter raises her voice, you say something like, “I'm not willing to continue this conversation while you’re yelling. I want to have a normal-level discussion.” That's your boundary; keep it simple.
When she doesn’t lower her voice, you say, "I'm going to pause our conversation for now and I'll be available to talk about this more when your voice is quieter."
Then, you take action to uphold your boundary - you hang up the phone or walk out of the room. This is hard, and it's essential. I know you want to be there for her, to listen and help her sort it out... But if you need that to happen without being yelled at, you must follow through. Taking action is how you convey the solidity and importance of your need, both to your daughter and to yourself.
Then stay steady and allow yourself to sit quietly in this place of honouring your truth and your needs. Place your hands on your heart and belly and feel the rightness of this. If self-doubt and guilt try to creep in and suggest you've been too harsh or selfish, that you're not being a good mother, stand sturdy on both legs and let them pass by.
Breathe deeply and trust in the bigger process of building a relationship that works for both of you over the long term.
Another example:
When your son hasn’t been getting the car back on time, you might say something like, “I’m not willing to rush to yoga class so I'm not going to lend you my car on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Then you uphold it by not giving him the keys on those days - no matter what 'urgent' events come up on his calendar. You withstand his complaints and pleas and keep reasserting that you're not willing to rush to your class. You honour your need and arrive at the studio ready to receive the full benefit of your yoga class.
And there's so much benefit for your son in this: learning to honour someone else's needs and, equally important, learning how assert and uphold his own boundaries. Our kids learn how to navigate adult life by how we navigate ours.
Setting a boundary with your teen is stating clearly what will work for you, deciding how you will behave if that’s not happening and following through to uphold it.
Being human like the rest of us, you won’t be able to adhere to your boundaries all the time. Even when you know exactly how you want to handle a situation, you can be thrown off guard by a single word, an incoming text or just a bird flying by. That’s ok, just continue practicing next time. Hold the vision of the relationship you're cultivating.
In the end, you can't control what others do. But you can ensure that you act in accordance with your own needs and limits. State them honestly and kindly, from your heart and soul, and then stay in your integrity and follow through on what you said you’d do.
And when you do this, week by week, one circumstance at a time, you create a relational space where you and your young adult see each other and feel seen. You are accepting and feel accepted. A place in which the beauty of both your paths and the light of both your souls is honoured.
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