Teaching Teenagers Personal Boundaries

Teenagers live in a culture where boundaries seem to be non-existent. So, teaching them about your own personal boundaries will help them think about developing their own boundaries and how to respect other people’s personal space, time and belongings. 

When I mention boundaries, don’t confuse it with household rules. Boundaries have more to do with what we all need to build around ourselves to guard from being walked all over by others who are less considerate. Boundaries are enforced by rules, but they are different from your household rules, because they have to do with protecting who we are as individuals and what we choose to put up with as we interact with others. 

Boundaries protect us; they define who we are, and who we are not.

Think of boundaries as you would your “personal space.”  When someone steps up and talks to you with their nose two inches away from your nose, you may feel that your personal space is being violated.  It can feel uncomfortable when that invisible barrier is crossed.

Likewise, teens who haven’t learned to respect personal boundaries can fail to realize that their parents are human beings who need their own space.  Naturally selfish teens can step over the line by putting more and more demands on a parent’s time, money and patience. If allowed to go on, the parents will eventually get walked on, dumped on, yelled at, and feel demeaned or disrespected.  They can begin feeling like their life is no longer their own; rather, it belongs to the care and feeding of their teenager’s selfishness. 

Reestablishing and communicating your need for personal space once your child reaches the teen years is important.  It will help them know that you are still a person, not just a parent, and you have needs, too.  For instance:  

• Privacy (I will decide who to allow in my personal space)
• Time (I will decide what will occupy my time….not my teen)
• Money (I can give to my teen out of love, but I owe him nothing)
• Action (I can say “no” to my teen’s demands, if I want to)
• Emotions (I won’t be “dumped” on or disrespected)

Boundaries…Even if You Love Serving Your Teenager

Some parents relish being needed by their teenager.  They dote on them and take care of their every need.  They ask “How high?” when their teens says, “Jump!” They may even take abuse and disrespect from their teen when it is directed their way, thinking, “Oh, they’re just having a bad day.”  These parents need to step back and understand that boundaries must still be established, for the teenager’s sake, and consequences need to be applied for stepping over those boundaries. If not, it will lead to selfish, bossy and entitled adolescents who don’t understand personal boundaries. 

My Teen is Going Too Far

It’s easy to tell when your teenager has gone too far.  You’ll feel frustrated, violated or a little “put out.”  But the question is, do they know they’ve crossed the line, or do they just think you’re the one being unreasonable in your reaction? They won’t know they’ve violated your boundaries until you clarify what those boundaries are.

When teens can get the feeling that we owe them everything,
tell them “I don’t owe a thing, but I want to give you everything.”

So, when you feel violated by your teenager’s inconsiderate nature, write down the boundary that could be a solution.  For example, “I need to be spoken to with reasonable respect,” or,” I need to have a clean car with a few drops of gas in the tank after it is borrowed,” or, “I need to be asked several hours in advance if a ride is needed,” or, “I need to be asked before you enter my room, dig in my purse, or borrow things from my closet.”  When you get these things under control, you’ll be protecting your privacy, your day, and a little bit of your sanity from your teenager’s selfishness and lack of consideration.

Communicating Boundaries

Once you’ve had some time to get your list together, cut it down to just ten items as a first step; which may be difficult, but teenagers have difficulty learning more than ten new concepts at a time.  Then sit down with your teenager after dinner to tell him something like, “There are a few things I am going to change having to do with how we interact with each other.  It’s time that we begin to interact in a more adult way.  Therefore, here are ten things that will change, effective immediately.”   Then, list the items, like: “I will no longer do your laundry…I will no longer drive you to school…I will no longer wake you up in the morning,” etc.

While normal discipline should be consistent across the family, personal boundaries can be different; they can be unique for each individual. Mom’s may be different from dad’s, and they may be different for a teenage girl versus a boy.  As you communicate your own boundaries, don’t make it one-sided.  Ask your teenager to develop their own personal boundaries as well.  Have them think about and list their own personal boundaries for the people they interact with, including you.  It’s a powerful way for them to think through their own individuality and how they’ll react to the influences in their life, including their peers.

Whenever you require your teenager to step up to the plate to take on adult responsibility or behavior, also communicate ways that you’ll be treating them more like adults in return.  For instance, giving them more freedoms or the ability to make their own choices. And let them know that you’ll respect their personal boundaries as well (as long as they are respectful and not counter to your household rules or your job as a parent).

What If My Teen Still Won’t Respect My Boundaries?

Your child may never fully agree with all of your boundaries, but he or she can be required to respect them, even if they don’t agree, or face the consequences of not respecting them. Breaking personal boundaries is a pretty big offense in my book, so be sure to set your consequences appropriately.

Your job, for as long as your children live with you, is to faithfully provide an arena for your children to learn respect, relationship, and boundaries. If not, they’ll about it and stumble off to college, to work, or to become parents themselves leaving in their wake a path of destructive behavior and relational missteps. 

As you begin to think about setting your boundaries, ask yourself, “What do I want the relationships and behavior toward me to look and feel like?”  Think about and communicate what you want changed in how your teenager relates to you. It will bring sanity to your home and help teach your children how to respect another person’s time, privacy, energy, space, and authority.  More importantly, it will ultimately teach your children self-control and to be good parents who teach boundaries when they have kids of their own.  So the cycle of life continues.

HEAR THE WEEKLY RADIO PROGRAM ON THIS TOPIC:  for more help on the topic of “Boundaries,” go to www.parentingtodaysteens.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark Gregston is an author, speaker, national radio host, and the founder of Heartlight, a residential counseling opportunity for struggling adolescents. Learn more at http://www.heartlightministries.org or call 903-668-2173.

Parental Consistency So Important

When I recently asked 3,000 parents what they would change if they could start over again in their parenting, the number one response was, “I’d be more consistent.”    

I suppose these parents now realize that their inconsistency led their teen and their family to a place they really didn’t want to go.  Whether rooted in misplaced love, or from being distracted by the hustle and bustle of life, or by not wanting to be the “bad guy” all the time, they made a habit of giving in, and now they are sorry for it.   >> Article continued…

A Clear Path to Teen Maturity

Parents of teenagers need to get out of the way and allow their kids to bend in the winds of life a little more. Through that gentle buffeting they’ll gain strength and wisdom to stand upright and flourish as adults.

It’s natural for parents to believe that trouble in the teen years can be avoided by keeping tight reins on their teenager. And they might be tempted to step in to fix their teen’s mistakes, thinking it will help them see how it should be done. But neither tactic is helpful.  Teens mature quicker and gain more confidence when parents step back and allow mistakes and the resulting consequences to happen.  They may not get it quite right at first, but eventually, through natural or applied consequences, the teen will learn to make better decisions. >> Article continued…

Teens Obsessed With Video Games

More than 2.5 billion video games have been sold worldwide and the industry is growing exponentially.  In fact, video game sales now surpass sales of both music and movies. For millions of kids and young adults, playing video games has become an obsession.

To give you some history, I grew up in New Orleans – not exactly the most conservative city. But when I was a kid, people weren’t allowed to play pinball games at the arcade until they were 21. That seems like a silly law today, especially since nowadays nearly every family has their own version of a pinball arcade right in their own home. I find nothing wrong with most of these games. In fact, playing them together with your teen is a great way to connect. But some kids and young adults are being consumed by them, and that’s where the problem lies. >> Article continued…

Don’t Be Blindsided by the Teen Years

Parents with children in the “tween” years should pat themselves on the back for a job well done! After a decade of protecting and nurturing their growing child, parenting can become easier at this time. But they would be wise to consider this breather period as a time to prepare for the often turbulent teen years and make the appropriate adjustments in their parenting style.

When your child reaches the ”tween” years,  parenting can seem to smooth out and become easier, but those who have been through this stage might call it, “the calm before the storm.”  The parent of a “tween-ager” may be tempted to think, “Why change the way I relate to my child, since things are going so well right now?” Here’s why…in a year or two your teen will begin to earnestly seek independence. They will spend more time away from you and your home, and they’ll become influenced by their culture and friends.   >> Article continued…

Boundaries for Teenagers

When a teenager doesn’t have boundaries, he does what seems right in his own eyes.

Contrary to what most moms and dads think, teens really do want rules. Rules help keep them headed in the right direction and prevent them from ending up in a place that they don’t want to be. When coupled with consequences, they help the teen more easily resist temptation and the inappropriate scheming of their peers. Having a good reason to say “No” comes as a relief to a teen raised to know basic moral values. Deep down, teens understand this, no matter how much they push against the rules, bend them, break them, and balk at them.

To be effective, rules need to be based on the boundaries you establish in your home, which are even more important and foundational for a child to learn. Boundaries aren’t the rules; they are the fence posts placed around behavior. They are the delineation of how a family’s beliefs are to be lived out; the “I will” and “I will not” statements that are the basis of our daily living and interaction with others. They help everyone in the family take responsibility for their own behavior, improve their choices, and know if they are headed into dangerous territory. >> Article continued…

Confronting Your Teen’s Mistakes

“The difference between the exact right words and the almost right words is like the difference between lightning bugs and lightning bolts.”  – Mark Twain

Avoiding toxic words and wrong motivations helps maintain a solid relationship while effectively confronting your teen’s mistakes.

I haven’t met a teen yet who doesn’t want to know they will continue to be loved when they’ve made mistakes. Loving someone seems easy when everything is going well.  It’s a quite different matter when your teen breaks your rules, and their life spins out of control.   In those times, the best way to demonstrate your continual love for them is to take care in the way you confront their misbehavior, avoiding toxic words and wrong motivations.

The first step is to let your teen know why you are confronting their misbehavior. It is that you love them and want to help them avoid bigger problems later in life. Demonstrate your respect for them by your demeanor, assuring them that you will move toward them in times of difficulty and struggle, not away from them.  Tell them that you can’t possibly love them any more than you do, and you’ll never love them any less, not even when they are at their worst. >> Article continued…

Parenting Teens This Week

Parenting Shift in the Teen Years

Do you know what needs to change about your parenting as your child approaches the teen years? So far, everything may be going like clockwork, so why change? What’s been working for more than a decade will surely continue working right up until the day your child leaves home, right?

Well, not always.  Some parents are caught off guard, baffled and confused when their teenager begins to turn their back on the family and all the values they hold dear. They thought they had done everything right, but for some reason, their teenager is spinning out of control.

So, how can this be avoided? What is it about your parenting that should change when your children reach the teen years?  Let me give you some suggestions… >> Article continued…

Allowing Teens to Break Out of the Box

Teens develop in maturity by doing, seeing, and experiencing. They crave freedom and they want to show the adults in their life that they are capable of making their own decisions. They want to break out of the box and have some control over what they do, where they go, and how they look.

But some parents prevent their teens from making mistakes at all costs (especially the same kind of mistakes they made when they were a teenager), so they apply more and more controls. This excessive sheltering can lead teens to a life of sneakiness (doing what they want to do behind the parent’s back), frustration, anger and eventually rebellion.

I can hear parents everywhere asking, “Isn’t this the time in their life when we need to rein them in? This culture is horrible!” I agree. In fact, it is precisely because the culture is so difficult that it is important for Christian parents to prepare their teen by helping them develop discernment. An overprotective parent accomplishes just the opposite, and the bud of discernment never develops into full-bloom.   >> Article continued…