Being a Guide to Your Teen as They Explore Boundaries

Written By: Dafne Garcia, Clinical Trainee at ACS, On-Campus Counseling Program

RAISING A FAMILYis not an easy job. As children go through their developmental stages, it challenges parents to learn and adapt to where their child is at developmentally. Raising a teen is no different. Teens go through many changes in their lives that include physical, emotional and identity changes. They are simply trying to figure life out, and because of this, they may push some limits and boundaries (which is completely normal!).

Feelings of frustration and annoyance may come to you as a parent because your child is not the child they were before, or because you’ve had a long day and simply don’t want to deal with the stress. During these years, your teenager may be talking back or delaying doing homework, and while these are important behaviors to regulate, teens may do this to test your boundaries and their own. As a parent, you may want to instantly handle this behavior before it goes too far and may even think, “What is wrong with you today!?” It’s a completely normal reaction to have when raising a teen. We have to remind ourselves, just like any developmental stage, this stage also guides your teen into figuring out how they want to handle difficult situations and how they want to feel about them.

“Push back” from your teen isn’t a reflection of your parenting. Push back from your teen can be them establishing an emotional boundary. Teens are figuring out how they can communicate with you as their parent when they feel that their boundary has been crossed. This can look like them shutting down or even closing the door while you’re trying to speak with them. Just remind yourself, as a human being and as their parent: They are learning, just like you are too.

Three things you can do for yourself and your teen to help guide them into setting healthy boundaries are:

1. Breathe and open your empathetic heart

As frustrating as it is to have your teen not want to talk to you, walk away from you, or even yell at you, remind yourself that they are learning how to set emotional and personal boundaries with you. This is the start of how they’re going to set their boundaries with friends, teachers, relationships, and, later in life, with co-workers and supervisors. Unfortunately and fortunately, you as their parent experience this rough stage of them figuring it out! Maintaining empathy for them will lessen your frustration and ease this journey for them.

2. You are your own person, just as they are their own person

What I mean by this is, your teens’ emotions are not yours. Teens will want to spend more time with friends and less time with family, they are going to question your authority, and/or they are going to be in their room by themselves more often. As difficult as it is to see your teen being a teen, allow them to have their own feelings and experiences. It doesn’t mean that they don’t love you, it means they are giving themselves permission to be independent and explore their feelings. Taking your teens’ emotions and behavior personally is normal, but remember that they cannot control your reactions. You have the power to walk away if they frustrate you. This not only benefits you, but it benefits them because you are modeling emotional regulation to your teen.

3. Your boundaries matter as well

Once again, teens are exploring, challenging the limits, testing how far they can go, but teens can also be unaware of how their words and actions can hurt others while they’re setting their boundaries. You can allow your teen to speak their thoughts but if they cross your boundaries, this is the perfect time to model for them that they hurt your feelings and cross a boundary. For example saying, “I know you’re upset that you had a bad day at school but your comments to me hurt my feelings so I will give you your space.” This will not only protect your boundaries but it will help your teen learn that setting emotional boundaries is not about hurting others. As you communicate to your teen in a clear way, they will understand that they also need to take responsibility for their own emotions and actions to develop healthy boundaries and respect others.

Boundaries are an important part of building identity, relationships and overall, setting the stage for how teens will handle future situations. As their parent, give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from them just like your teen will make mistakes during this journey.