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.

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…

Pull Out All the Stops to Help Your Teen

For parents, there is no worse feeling than watching your child spin out of control while nothing you do seems to make any difference.  If your teenager’s behavior is giving you feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and fear, I would like to offer you some suggestions. 

First, stop what you are doing and start a new way of thinking in regard to how you are handling the situation.  Albert Einstein defined insanity as ”Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  If your home is feeling a little “insane” these days, perhaps you need to change how it operates.  >> Article continued…

Super Hero or Not?

None of us can see our own errors; deliver me, LORD, from (my) hidden faults! -­ Psalms 19:12 

Being a super hero works out pretty well in the movies or comic books, but when it comes to parenting, rescuing your teenager every time can lead to problems. It can spoil their ability to see the world as it truly is, and it can cause uncaring, self-centered and entitled thinking in your teenager now and throughout their lifetime.

Parents are wired to protect their children. It’s natural and it is needed in the early childhood years, but some parents continue protecting their offspring far longer than they should. Beginning in the teen years, kids need to begin feeling the impact of their own actions and to be given more responsibility for their own survival.

Counter to what some people might think, I find that the most irresponsible teens come from the most responsible parents. I call them “Super Parents.” They are so fixated on fixing problems that they fix all of their teenager’s mistakes as well. They don their cape and fly off to badger a teacher who has given their teenager a bad grade. They run faster than a steaming locomotive and bend steel bars to get their errant teen out of jail. And in everyday terms; they pick up their teen’s room, manage his money, pay his speeding tickets, wash his cloths and rush him to school when he oversleeps in the morning. >> 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

A Healthy Relationship with Your Teen

Do you want to become your child’s best friend? Of course you do! But does friendship with your child ever get in the way of your parenting? Do you cover your eyes and ears, or overlook problems with your teenager’s behavior because you fear that confrontation will hurt your relationship?

Some parents place so much value on having a great relationship with their child that they fail to take the appropriate position of parental authority in their life. It becomes more of an issue when there is a split in a family and each parent tries to impress a child in order to gain that child’s love. Or, it can happen if a parent is insecure and their child’s life has become their life too. It can even happen if a teen becomes rebellious and the parent caves in to their anger or bad behavior. >> Article continued…

All Due Respect from Your Teenager

The late Rodney Dangerfield’s “I get no respect” jokes were pretty funny. But it isn’t a laughing matter when a teenager becomes disrespectful to a parent.

While disrespect from a teenager can be demeaning and confusing to parents, it actually brings more harm to the child by tearing at the very fabric of their future. It may be rooted in an authority figure showing disrespect to the child. Or, the child could be imitating the disrespect they see exhibited by their peers or other family members – including their parents. >> Article continued…