BOUNDARIES
Teach your children that they too can create boundaries in relationships
Peaceful Parenting # 128
CAN YOU TRUST YOUR TEEN? DOES YOUR TEEN TRUST YOU?
As the parent of a teenager, you are faced with the thrill and dilemma of your child’s maturation and desire for increased freedom. If all is well, you have taught your child the skills necessary for him to handle the big wide world without you. But how do you know if all is well? You may be reassured by how your child behaves in your presence, but how do you know what he does when you’re not around? You my even feel confident in your own child’s skills, abilities, and demonstrated maturity in handling increased freedoms. But what about the other teenagers with whom your child spends time? Can you trust them? Can you trust that the parents of other children have done a good job too? It is difficult to trust your child when he is a teen, even when you’ve worked to build that trust for so many years.
How will your children ever learn to handle themselves without you if you are always around? At some point, as frightening as it may be, you must let go, at least a little bit, so your children can learn how to fly without you. As long as you stay involved and connected with your child, can you also trust he will come to you if he gets into difficulty or runs into a problem? If you’re not sure, take the necessary steps, talking and working with your child to ensure this is true and will happen.
We parents have a tremendous desire to check up on our son or daughter and find out what they are up to. This curiosity and urge to keep our child safe may lead some parents to pry or spy on their kiddo.
Recently a friend told me she found a letter in her son’s room that was sent to him by a girl. This mom did not deliberately set out to spy on her son but was returning clean laundry to his room when she came upon the letter.
Driven by curiosity, she spent some time trying to rationalize why opening his private letter would be okay. She was also suspicious of her own motivation and called me for advice.
“Is what you’re thinking about doing going to improve your relationship with your son?” As soon as I asked my friend this question, she knew she must walk away from his letter, leaving it alone, and unopened by her.
During adolescence children crave increased privacy, which helps them feel a greater sense of power and freedom, the needs most strongly driving them at this age and stage. As your children guard their privacy, parents can grow increasingly suspicious and fearful about what their need for privacy means. What are they hiding? But if you let these suspicions and fears lead to breaking into your children’s private letters, emails, texts, phone calls and other messages, what will that do to your relationship? Here are three solutions that may help:
Choose to trust your child. Trusting is a choice. As difficult as that may feel, if you don’t trust your children, how will you ever believe that they are trustworthy? How will they ever believe it about themselves?
Talk with your child about her life, her interests, friends, hopes, dreams disappointments and all. But be prepared for your child to be guarded and suspicious of your interest. Don’t let that stop you from showing her that you care and want to know what’s happening and important in her life. It’s okay, even great, just to let her know you aren’t snooping or digging for something nefarious. Let her know that she has the right to keep her own boundaries and not share what she doesn’t want to share with you. Let her know you love her and always will. And you want to know what is important to her.
Ask yourself, “Is what I’m about to do or say going to improve our relationship?” If the answer is no, then don’t do or say it. If the answer is you’re not sure, then ask your child what effect you asking the question or making the statement will have on your relationship. If the answer is that it will improve your relationship, then say it or do it. Let her have the power to decline your question.
No one said being a parent was easy. Perhaps no one ever told you about the fears that accompany parenting. Personally, I never learned about them until I was in it! During the frightening times of parenting an adolescent, you can more successfully maneuver your way through this mystery maze by evaluating your own behaviors. If you do, you will have a greater chance of maintaining your positive, loving relationship with your child. (read #3 above.)
Eventually our children grow older; they are less guarded of their privacy. In fact, they may begin to look forward to sharing their lives with you — to their own limited extent. They will learn you trust them. And you will have demonstrated that you were trustworthy.
SHOULD YOUR CHILD TRUST ALL ADULTS?
This question is a tricky part of the equation. Another part of a parent’s job is helping our children learn that they have a right to say NO, to walk away or withdraw from adults if they don’t feel safe. This includes teachers, coaches, parents of friends, and even relatives. Life would be better and easier if all adults treated children with respect, asking for permission before they intrude in an attempt to help. But alas, there are far too many “adults” who mistakenly believe they have the right to intimidate, power over, browbeat or bully children, including teenagers, simply because as adults they inherently have more power than children at every age.
Parents, hopefully, teaching your child about STRANGER DANGER is already part of your parenting agenda. And with your increasingly independent teen, it’s also important to teach stranger danger in an expanding way.
Help your kiddo recognize and trust their Spidey Sense, your child’s internal intuitive subtle and uneasy tingling, feeling letting a person know that something is off even if you can’t explain what or why. It’s our gut instinct, our internal message turning on our inner voice, our safe/unsafe switch, our hunch or feeling, sometimes referred to as a “sixth sense.”
I recently wrote a Substack article about my own personal experience as a child, alone in a playground when an older boy (probably 10-years-old) also entered the play area. He didn’t play on any of the equipment; he just watched me. I watched him warily and eventually felt in my bones that something was off, not right, not safe. I ran home as fast as I could, away from what I perceived as danger.
Was I right? Was this other kid really a danger? Who knows. I didn’t wait around long enough to find out.
Parents, please don’t forget to teach your children about their own internal safety alert guard.
This can be very tricky. How do you teach your children to be alert to potential dangers without scaring them, frightening them so much that they hesitate and refuse to engage with new people and situations, becoming fearful to explore the bigger, wider, wonderous world? Finding a healthy, helpful balance isn’t’ easy.
It’s been some time since my children were young. I don’t have any clear memory of or how or even if, I talked to them about this notion. . .
But at a recent family gathering I asked my adult sons and their wives if they taught my grandchildren any of these necessary strategies and skills for their safety when they were flying solo.
Yes! My son David told me about the “safety word,” Juniper they taught their daughter to use if she was at a friend’s house and didn’t feel safe. She was to call home and ask about the cat “Juniper.” This was her safe word. Her parents understood she was calling for help.
Both of my daughters-in-law, along with their husbands (my sons) attended classes that covered all sorts of potentially unsafe situations children might encounter. They learned how to manage these scenarios BEFORE these events came to pass. Learning answers to questions, such as: Would any parents be home when your kiddo (of any age) was at a friend’s house? Were there any guns in the home? If yes, how were they stored?
They learned all this and more from a wonderful woman: Feather Berkower, MSW, and her program Parenting Safe Children.
If you’re inetersted in learning more, you can find Ms. Berkower on facebook, or google her at: www.parentingsafechildren.com I strongly encourage you to learn more about her and her work. You will learn a lot about how to empower your children so they can keep themselves safe!
Boundaries may be tricky, but they ensure safety and open the door to healthier connections.
Cheers, Dr. Nancy
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