SETTING BOUNDARIES
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 48.
Hello, friends. I've been running myself in way too many directions for the past couple of weeks, and it's starting to catch up with me. I'd started off wanting to focus this podcast on the topic of setting boundaries with our teens, but honestly, I started to realize that setting boundaries in our life is a much bigger topic than just how we relate to other people.
In my own life, I'd like to think I've learned to set pretty healthy boundaries for myself in many areas, but as I'm reflecting on it today, I find myself realizing how many more boundaries I really should be considering. These boundaries actually have much more to do with how I treat myself than how I respond or relate to anybody else. So today, let's talk about all of it.
Boundaries we want to set with our kids, a topic that many clients come to me wanting to address, boundaries we might want to set in other relationships, and I think most importantly, the boundaries we set for ourselves. So let's tackle boundaries with our kids first. This raising teens business is not for the weak.
Our kids are trying so hard to assert their independence that it feels like even the simplest boundaries are difficult to set and enforce. I was coaching a woman a few weeks ago when her children are a little younger, her oldest only 11 with three younger siblings. She's managed to hold out on getting her son a phone so far, but she wanted coaching on how to set boundaries around using the iPad during the week.
Early in the school year, she'd taken away the privilege of using the iPad during weekdays because she noticed her son was rushing to complete his homework. She was already at the point of judging herself for having such a strict rule, but she wasn't sure how to move toward being more lenient. Maybe you remember those early days when the rules felt a bit easier to set and enforce.
It's also an interesting reminder that this letting go of control has been happening for quite some time now. It's just that now our teenagers are closer to thinking they're adults. We're forced to face our total lack of control.
It's a common misconception that we tend to think of setting boundaries as the same as making rules. They're actually different in very important ways. Rules are essentially limits on our children's actions or behaviors, as in no hitting or you can only watch one hour of television.
You have to finish your homework before you can play video games. I imagine you had quite a few rules for your kids when they were little, and for the most part, you had total control in terms of how you enforce those rules. Our kids, of course, didn't always follow them, but when they didn't, there were consequences.
Today with teens, rules? Forget it. Don't get me wrong, we probably do have rules still. No drugs, go to school, get home by curfew.
Until they're 18, we can still set rules, and maybe some of us even try to set them after our kids are 18. And some of our kids follow the rules. Not every teen is a rule breaker, but for those moms who have a kid who's more likely to throw caution to the wind and be willing to see how far they can go before they get caught, I feel you.
Setting rules with this bunch feels like throwing sand in the wind, pointless and messy. So rules are about setting a limit on somebody else's behavior. A boundary is what you will or will not do.
This can simply be a boundary for yourself, as in what you will or will not do in certain situations, or it could be related to what you will or will not do in response to somebody else's behavior. Setting boundaries is actually about us, not the other person. I've often had clients say to me, I have a hard time setting boundaries.
What they often mean is that they have a hard time getting their teenager or their husband or somebody else in their life to do what they want them to do. My friend, if controlling other people is the same as setting boundaries, then we're all doomed to because we cannot control other adults' behavior. And I'll include in that group are now almost adult or want to be adult children.
Every two weeks, I've been offering free group coaching calls to those who subscribe to the small jar community. And this past Saturday, I presented a workshop on the dream checklist. It's a concept I created to help us navigate relationships in a way that creates more powerful results and deeper connections with people we care about.
In any relationship, we have a set of expectations for other people, what we want them to do, how we want them to act or treat us, the things we think they should say or not say. This is true for everyone, even total strangers. But with people we care about deeply, particularly our kids, we take these expectations really seriously.
Because let's face it, it's been our job for upwards of 20 years to raise our kids. And we've raised them based on our beliefs around what we want for them and the kind of people we want them to be. Each of us have a set of beliefs and values based on the way we grew up, our religion, our culture, the way we were educated, our past experiences.
So whether we realize it or not, all of this informs our expectations for our kids. When our kids were young, it felt so much easier to match our expectations to their behavior. If they didn't follow our rules, there would be consequences.
So it's almost like we've practiced the belief that we have some control over our kids. Clients often come to me saying, my child thinks I'm trying to control him. And we resist that accusation because we don't want to control our kids.
What we actually want is to influence them, gently push them in the right direction. But then our kids push back or pull away. So we're stuck in a kind of tug of war with our teens that feels painful and frustrating.
We all ultimately want our kids to be independent and responsible for themselves. But when they're teens, frankly, even in their 20s, we're often not entirely sure that they're ready to be responsible. And we see plenty of evidence that they're not.
So what's the dream checklist? Essentially, this is a list of all of the things that you really want, your teenager, or frankly, it could be anyone. It's the list of all of the things you would want them to do, how you would want them to show up, even who you would ideally want them to be. Said another way, it's like painting a picture that represents, if all of my dreams for my child came true, this is what it would look like right now, next month, next year, in the future.
In the workshop, we talked about a number of different categories that could be on the dream checklist. How our kids approach academics, their long-term aspirations, their health, their safety, their habits, their social life, their love life, how they talk to us, how they behave, the qualities they exhibit. If you really reflect on this list you have for your kids, and we did a similar exercise in last week podcast for our spouse or partners.
If we really come up with this list, it becomes a tangible representation of what we think success and happiness looks like for our kids. In other words, we think if our kids get good grades, have nice friends, stay away from drugs and alcohol, get involved, act kind, be respectful, take responsibility, whatever that list looks like in your mind for your kid, we think that is ultimately the guide to how we can help them avoid pain and disappointment in their life and access success and happiness. And let's be really honest with ourselves, this is the list we think that will make us feel happy and successful.
Because if all of the boxes on the checklist were checked, we could breathe a sign of relief and pat ourselves on the back that we did it. Well, maybe not us, but it's almost like then we could give ourselves permission to stop worrying. Feeling so responsible for a kid's success and happiness.
You can apply this dream checklist concept to anyone in your life, your spouse, parents, boss, friends, neighbor, siblings, anyone with whom you have a strange or stressful relationship. Write down your dream list about how they should change, who they should ideally be in order for you to feel better. Just like with our kids, if our partner could just be more appreciative, help out around the house a bit more, show a bit more affection, make more money, be less stressed or stingy with money.
If only he would do those things, we think we would be happy. If our mom or our mother-in-law would stop nitpicking at the way we parent or would stop dropping by unannounced, maybe then we could be happy or less annoyed at least. Just notice how much our dream checklists set us up for disappointment.
But even more, they set us up for dependence on how other people behave so we can feel better. It rarely works, particularly with those people who routinely miss the mark on what we want out of them. One of my favorite questions to ask clients when they tell me someone's been acting a terrible way for so long and they feel frustrated about it, I often ask, why are you still surprised that they act this way? So if dream checklists are flawed because they depend on other people to behave how we want them to behave and they never do, one would think that the dream checklists we have for ourselves would be much easier to live up to.
And sadly, it's often not the case. What does your dream checklist for you look like? Who do you think you should be that you don't think you are right now? How should you be better? If you could paint a perfect picture of who you would like to be, what would that look like? How would you feel all the time? What would you be doing that's different than what you're doing now? Throughout our life, we've tried to live up to our own dream checklist and sometimes we've succeeded, but we dwell much more often on the times we failed. Maybe it's that we don't want to nag our kids or we don't want to finish off that batch of cookies or drink the whole bottle of wine.
Maybe it's in trying to feel better to stop feeling so sad and anxious. We disappoint ourselves all of the time and then we pile on with judgment, deciding that maybe there's something wrong with us, that we're not able to live up to our own expectations. When it comes down to it, so many of us struggle with not living up to our own expectations.
So we have all of these hopes and dreams around how others and ourselves should be. And in this moment, it is inevitable that at least some of our expectations aren't met. Let's go back to the expectations we have for our kids.
When we're experiencing pain related to one particular area where a teen is testing boundaries, pushing back, or just doing something that leads us to feel worried or anxious, this is an opportunity to really look into what's going on with us and with our team. So we obviously don't want this thing to be happening, whatever it is, and our reaction to not wanting it is to resist or try to fix it. But that thing is happening and presumably it's happening for a reason.
They are acting or responding to their own needs and wants and it's clear if we're frustrated or disappointed that those needs and wants don't match our dream checklist for them. So what are your kids needs and wants? Have you spent any time really trying to drop into their perspective? Or better yet, could you ask them? Maybe our teen is dating someone we don't like or who doesn't like us. Rather than focusing on our story about how this person is wrong for our child, have we considered why our child might like them? The truth is they're with him or her.
It stands to reason that they're with that person because it's what they think will make them happy right now, even if we don't agree. What if our teen is spending too much time locked in their room playing video games or watching TV, never going out? Our dream checklist includes something like, I wish my teen would go out more and have more friends, stop spending so much time alone in his room. But again, the truth is they're in their room gaming or watching Netflix.
What do you think is their motivation? Maybe they're challenged in social relationships. Maybe what they need right now is to be safe at home. Rather than wishing their behavior was different, have you gotten curious about what thoughts and feelings are creating how they're showing up right now? This isn't about condoning behavior or toxic situations, nor is it about trying to convince yourself that your dream checklist isn't valid.
It's about recognizing that you have a dream checklist and your child has their own dreams and motivations. And right now, all that's happening is there isn't a match between your respective lists. So what do boundaries look like when we're navigating life with teens in this situation? As I mentioned before, boundaries are different than rules.
Boundaries are clearly communicated expectations around how you will respond if something happens. For example, if your teen comes home after curfew repeatedly with no reason, a boundary could be that you take away access to the car. If your teen speaks to you in what you would consider a disrespectful manner, your boundary could be that you walk away.
One factor that could be motivating our kids' behavior is they want to assert their independence. And this may look like them pushing back against the boundaries we set as parents. Look, we still need to set some boundaries connected to rules or limits until our kids turn 18, probably after.
And kids are often not going to like these rules and limits. It can make us as moms feel guilty for saying no. We could also feel hurt because our teen is angry with us for setting a limit.
Our dream checklist might as well include our teenager should be happy when we set limits, except for they're not. And what if that's okay? Here's a moment when you have to ask yourself, do you care more about making them happy than setting the boundary or rule? Presumably, this rule you've set is related to their well-being or managing their time. Can you let trump their happiness for the moment? You get to decide.
As our kids get older, setting these rules becomes more challenging because they have strong opinions about not wanting to adhere to limits. Again, this is an opportunity to really connect with our kids in the conversation about what those rules and boundaries look like, keeping in mind that we have a dream checklist and that it differs from our kids' dream checklist. Of course, I'm not saying that we give into their list a hundred percent, but knowing they have a list, how can we enter into a conversation being willing to listen to reasonable opportunities to give them near-term independence while ensuring that they're focused on the long-term opportunities and consequences in front of them? So one of the key aspects of setting boundaries is communication.
We need to clearly communicate our expectations and any associated consequences of our expectations aren't met. That part, the consequence, is the boundary. If you fail to meet this expectation or break this rule, I will respond in this way.
This is my boundary. But as we set these expectations and boundaries, in an ideal world, we can listen to and involve our teen in the rulemaking process so they are bought in and feel heard. Sometimes the area where a dream checklist for a child isn't being met relates to times when our kids are doing something that we can't create a rule around.
For example, what if your kid never goes out and you observe they don't have a reliable circle of friends? It's not like you can set a rule about them making friends, but we still desperately want this item on our list to be checked because to us, when our kids stay home and don't seem to have friends, we get anxious. We worry that they might feel lonely or depressed and we want to fix it so they can feel better, so we can feel better. But while you can't set a rule to fix a situation and nagging about them getting out there hasn't worked, we have an opportunity to set a boundary around how you respond when you notice you feel sad or anxious because you're worried your child is lonely.
Rather than nagging him to go out and meet people in reaction to your fear, can you recognize that all that's happening is your dream checklist isn't being met? Maybe you can be there for your child exactly as they are right now without needing to change them or worrying about the worst-case scenario. Setting this boundary takes effort on your part. This isn't about resisting the urge to nag, it's about deeply understanding where your sad or anxious feelings are coming from and working through your pain rather than trying to fix it by fixing your child.
In many cases, we think the problem is our child, but the root cause of our pain is never our child. It's that the hopes and dreams we have for our child aren't being met and that brings us pain. We never want to give up our hopes and dreams for our kids, but we can learn to recognize how these hopes and dreams are leading us to show up in a way that isn't helping.
The power of understanding your own mind when it comes to expectations for others is that you can become a master at making peace with your expectations, making peace with the fact that your pain is being caused by your mind. Once you're able to master that concept, you can clearly set boundaries around how you will or will not respond or react when you observe that someone else isn't meeting your expectations. For our kids, this relates to both setting and enforcing boundaries for them, in other words, how you'll respond when they cross a non-negotiable line, and also in setting and enforcing boundaries for yourself in terms of how you will respond when you notice your own pain and your desire to change others so that you can feel better.
We all do this. This is a natural human reaction to pain, to want to fix it, and as mothers, we're the masters of looking for pain in our children and wanting to make it better. We've been doing it, largely with success, for maybe 13, 15 years, and now it's not working in the same way that it used to.
We can't just give our kids a hug and some warm encouragement to get them back on their feet. We can't give them a stern warning or five minutes in the corner to get them back in line, and we can't nag them or convince them to do something different. Our power lies in how we show up.
That's in our control. Our kids aren't, not anymore, but I found that my boys are much more likely to listen and consider my guidance when I am very clear with myself about which items on my dream checklist for them are mission critical and which are nice-to-haves. My boundary for myself is that I let the nice-to-haves go, and I even double-check the mission criticals, as in, do I really need to get involved here? Is it my job to fix this? Or is the worst-case scenario a lesson they might need to learn on their own? Not only has the strategy of setting boundaries with my boys been a game-changer for me in terms of how I feel, it's also given me the gift of my boys rising to the occasion without any input on my end, without any unwelcome help or encouragement.
They've done it all on their own, and watching that happen has been a bigger gift than anything I could have imagined. I've also observed my boys fail to meet their own expectations sometimes, and I've seen them work through their own disappointment, learning a lesson that they never would have learned if it had come from me without the pain of failure. Setting boundaries is an action we take from a well-managed mind, and this is a practice I teach in my program, Mom 2.0. Ten weeks, and you'll become the master.
But what about setting boundaries for yourself? Now, this is amazing. Already, you can see the possibility of how setting boundaries for yourself around your teen's behavior can free you from unnecessary anxiety and sadness. Setting boundaries for yourself around your own behavior, feeling, and thinking, this is life-changing.
Let me share a few examples. As moms or women, we can feel resentment. For me, it's this uncomfortable tantrum-like feeling that stems from thoughts like, I do so much around here, no one ever helps, everyone leaves this place a mess, now I have to cook dinner, no one appreciates my effort.
We think it's the other people's fault. What's actually happening is that we're making a choice to do things, and on our dream checklist, we had hopes that others would behave in a way that demonstrated their appreciation more, or that they did their fair share. But what's really happening is that we've made a choice, that we want a clean home, that we want a cooked dinner for our family, that we want our kids' rooms to be clean, or the laundry clean.
We want this, but we also want more help. What does a boundary look like here? For me, it looked like being really honest with myself about what I wanted and taking responsibility for that, but also becoming really familiar with what things I was doing because I really wanted the outcome, and which I was doing out of guilt, as in, I should be cooking dinner. For me, first, setting boundaries was taking responsibility for the things I really cared about, and letting go of the shoulds that I didn't really care about.
And even more importantly, letting go of the guilt that I wasn't doing those things. So I care about clean laundry, and I'm willing to let go of cooking dinner every night. My boundary is that I will not let myself feel guilt for not cooking every night.
I also set a boundary with myself that I'm very clear about expectations with my family about how I want them to help clean up after meals, or be responsible for cleaning their own rooms. By setting boundaries with myself about how much I will take on, I free myself of so much overwhelm and guilt, and I'm able to calmly ask for the help I need. Let's take another example around overeating or over drinking.
When we engage in emotional buffering, it's typically because we have a habit for solving for emotion through action. Meaning, when we want to feel less pain, we eat or have a drink. When we want to feel more joy, maybe we also eat or drink.
The process of unwinding this habit is twofold. Being willing to understand the underlying cause of the habit, and this involves being really curious about what's going on in your mind that's causing the pain, or the need for more short-term pleasure. We say to ourselves, today I'll let myself feel whatever comes up and not eat or drink in response to it.
That's one boundary. Then we have an opportunity to see what comes up for us. Obviously the urge to eat or drink, but also to see what's really going on underneath the urge.
This is a process of retraining yourself to delay gratification to break the habit, and in the process you gain the superpower of being able to handle any emotion without needing to eat or drink it away. But sometimes in the process of learning, we give in and we do eat or drink to feel better. So the second important boundary is not beating ourselves up when we don't meet our own expectations.
We take it as an opportunity to learn. Here are some other examples. Looking at yourself in the mirror and setting a boundary around how you will or will not talk to yourself.
Trying to achieve a goal and setting a boundary around how you will or will not respond when things don't go as you hoped. Looking at your list of things to do and being willing to let go and have your back about it. Setting a boundary around not feeling guilty.
Feeling compassion for yourself when you feel sad or anxious and sending a boundary around not beating yourself up. Being willing to let things go. Giving yourself grace.
Loving yourself and knowing you can give yourself anything you need. You don't have to wait for other people to do better so you can feel better. Believing all of this is possible for you.
The most powerful boundaries are those around how you treat yourself. If you want to learn how, I invite you to check out my program Mom 2.0. All of this is possible for you.
We'll see you next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
