Boundaries and Expectations with Teenagers: The Secrets to Guiding Your Teen Without Pushing Them Away

Author: Mark Burnard | Counsellor at Hills Relationship Centre

Parents love their kids and the concern for their safety and wellbeing leads us to want to put up

some guardrails and boundaries to keep them safe and happy. However, as they grow it is very

natural for teens especially to test boundaries, to be adventurous, sometimes overconfident, to run risks and even be plain rebellious. However, not all teenagers are the same and even within

families, kids can differ in personality, ranging from being quite compliant and easy going, to

extremely feisty and willful. It’s all normal, but it can be confusing for parents who think that they have treated each young person the same way, they have, their basic parenting strategies have been the same, but the kids’ personalities are different. Don’t panic, this is parenting at its

toughest, stay calm, it’s all ok.

1. Model What You Want to See

I hear a lot these days about young people not having well developed brains and therefor to be more likely to react emotionally and without thinking. This is scientifically very well researched, and we have learned a lot in recent decades about brain development and neuroplasticity. However, even knowing this, it is still highly challenging for adults to be patient through this developmental stage that feels like it’s going to last forever. But that is also why it is so important for us parents, when we are upset with our learning-to-be-an-adult kids, to not react emotionally and without thinking ourselves. If we want our kids to learn how to think before they act or fire off a verbal barrage, if we want our kids to consider the consequences of their actions, we need to model this way of thinking and behaving ourselves.

Ok, so occasionally you might really need to have a small meltdown or moment of panic… If you

are co-parenting, at least try to take it in turns so one of you can indulge in a tantrum or crisis

(behind closed doors so the kids can’t see or hear) while the other stays calm and steady.

More about teamwork later.

2. Boundaries = Safety

It’s also worth considering that even though many teenagers will rebel or push against boundaries, it doesn’t mean they don’t (possibly very secretly) want and respect boundaries. I observed this a lot in working in schools. Sure, teenagers want freedom and don’t like being bossed around, but they also don’t like complete chaos. High school kids don’t like classes that are chaotic because it doesn’t feel safe. They certainly want to have some fun and freedom, but they also want to feel things are well organized, comfortable and calm.

Reasonable rules and routines help young people know what’s going on, what to expect, and that they are not at risk of being bullied, looking stupid, embarrassed or attacked. Appropriate boundaries help kids, even teenagers, feel safe. It’s the same in our families. The boundaries will need to change as kids hit the teenage years, but they still need to be there to keep everybody, including parents, feel safe, calm and respected.

A question to think about: What rules, boundaries or consequences do we have in our family that

enhance safety, stability and respect?

3. Boundaries = Care

Boundaries also help communicate to our kids that we care about them. Many teenagers I have

had to work with regarding their problematic behaviour hate the fact that one or both parents never had any rules about who they hung around with and what they got up to in the middle of the night. To these kids, it meant their parents didn’t love or care for them (though that’s not exactly how they put it) - they would have loved for their mum or dad to at least ask them where they were going when they walked out of the house to roam the streets with the people they thought really did care for them.

By putting in some boundaries and having expectations, we are telling our kids that we see them, we take responsibility for them, they are ours, and we care. Teenagers need to hear and feel this even if they disguise this with a few emotionally reactive words or sullen body language.

4. Boundaries and Teamwork

If you’re a single parent, it is helpful to have someone you can talk to about difficult decisions.

However, if you are fortunate enough to have a parenting partner, even if they are not in the same house, it is important to not make snap decisions if at all possible and to take the time to consider things properly, talk them through, voice concerns with each other, support each other, and get on the same page so you can work together as a team. Our kids are watching us as parents, they notice a lot more than we may think, they will take note of how we make decisions together, not just what the actual decision is. If we are fighting about it (and respectfully discussing different perspectives or options is not fighting) we look and sound chaotic and unstable which undermines our young people’s sense of stability, confidence and trust in us.

5. What Is an Appropriate Boundary?

Good boundaries are ones that enhance safety and encourage what we want to see in our families – trust, peace, respect, cooperation, responsibility. (You can probably think of more, but have you ever discussed these values with your teenager and asked them what they think?) Good boundaries are also ones that need minimal enforcement. If you want to make a rule that everyone gets up at 6.00am every day to do yoga and exercise… good luck, you’re in for a lot of frustration and you are probably going have to start setting your alarm a lot earlier than you do now. The Quiet Carriage rule on Sydney trains works because most people think it’s fair enough, understand the benefit, and are willing to go along with it. I have seen it broken occasionally but I’ve never seen it policed - it doesn’t really need to be.

6. What About Punishments or Sanctions?

Sometimes… sometimes… you may feel this is really necessary, but there is actually a lot of

research to show that punishments are generally pretty ineffective and can actually do more harm than good. (A topic for another day, perhaps.) However, if you feel it is really necessary to make a particular point, just make sure that it is proportionate and related to the stated value of concern, so that while you are being firm and clear, you are not putting too much pressure on the relationship by appearing to be unreasonable or overreacting. Be prepared for a long and involved discussion on the issue of fairness and be ready to justify your decision. The discussion might start with, “as your parent it is my responsibility to…” but what follows after that is critical. This is one of the most pressured points in the whole process, fairness is highly valued and easily disagreed on.

Implementing and enforcing rules, sanctions and punishments can be exhausting and leave us

looking weak and ineffective if we sound unreasonable or can’t follow through effectively, so it’s a ‘use sparingly’ and ‘think carefully’ strategy.

7. Don’t Confuse Being Strong with Being Coercive

Unfortunately, in our modern society we still have a lot of people who think that being strong

means being a bully, speaking over the top of others, being bossy, rude, intolerant, aggressive,

over-powering and sometimes violent. Such people do a lot of damage in our world because they

are a threat to our safety and wellbeing.

Firm and measured action is sometimes necessary, but real strength is shown in sticking to universal values consistently, being reasonable and fair, trusting and supporting people, offering encouragement, being compassionate and caring, taking time to listen and negotiate, and celebrating when things go well. These are the sort of people (and parents) who help us (and our kids) feel safe and valued.

8. Who Can We Really Control?

A lot of adults live in fear of the day their kids work out that their parents can’t really control them. The idea is to have helped our kids learn a good degree of self-control by this point. This is why it is also ok to let go of the exhausting need to be in total control of our kids and accept that the only person we can really control is ourselves. It doesn’t mean we give up on being influential through the respect we have earned of course, but we may need to release ourselves from the burden of trying to make our kids live the way we want them to, for our own wellbeing as well as theirs.

However, while we may not be able to force our teenager do things like tidy their room, we can be in control of ourselves and choose to stop going in and tidying it up for them. The free taxi service might need a break, the 5-star laundry service might even need to stop until certain individuals have learned to pick things up off the floor-drobe and put them in the laundry basket themselves, or maybe they could be presented with a set of very simple instructions on how to operate the washing machine on their own.

We might not be able to monitor our teen’s use of their phone every single minute of the day, but we can decide not to pay for the latest upgrade or an unlimited plan for them. We may not be able to stop them from making poor choices about friends, but we can choose to have a mature discussion about why we worry and what friendship is all about, rather than delivering yet another (brilliant!) lecture on the subject which they weren’t listening to last time either. Because when those “friends” let them down, or isolate them, or when life gets

tough (or expensive), who are they going to come back to? Hopefully that’s us, but it’s not

guaranteed if we have pushed them away by constantly criticising, blaming, nagging, punishing,

threatening, over-reacting and putting them down. There may be storms of protest, but we can hold our nerve and even be willing to listen to protests when they are voiced calmly and respectfully and not as a tirade of expletives or abuse (there’s a good boundary to have – if you yell and scream at me, the conversation is over).

9. Be Ready and Willing to Listen (Properly)

It’s also important to keep calm so we can do the hardest thing of all - listen. If we shut kids down, refuse to hear what they have to say, insult them, tell them they are stupid or being ridiculous, if we are lucky, they will fight back and yell at us. That means we are at least still important enough for them to bother expending energy on us in a carefully directed tirade. Yep, that’s if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, they may well just shut down and stop trying to talk to us at all; and sooner or later, we’re going to wonder why they are so withdrawn and quiet, and why when we ask for their opinion about something, they just shrug their shoulders and walk off.

When we listen to our kids, we might be surprised at how insightful they actually are, what they

really think, how deeply they think, what really happened that night at the party, what the

complications were, how mistakes happened, how that video of them ended up on social media,

what upset them the most, how let down they felt by their friends, what they have learned, how

they want things to be different next time. We might be able to ask a few questions that help them open-up, reflect and think things through. In this way we develop mutual respect, and they might be more willing to listen to how worried we get, how much we care, how confused we are, how hard it is to be a parent, how much pain we feel when we don’t know how to help or prevent bad things from happening. Our kids might just see what real humans we are (by the way, this is a good thing) and how much we love them and want to be there for them, how proud of them we are, even when we are exasperated, frustrated and maybe even angry.

10. Ever Heard This?

Remember too that when your gorgeous teenager screams at you something like, “… you are the

worst parent in the world and I hate you!!” What they’re really saying is… “I love you and you are

important to me, but I’m just totally confused and upset about how it seems you aren’t happy with me anymore and we aren’t getting on like we used to.” It’s ok, when everyone has taken some time out to cool down there’ll be a chance to talk it through. Good luck!

If you would like to discuss any of these issues as they look in your particular context or would like to learn more about working as a parenting team, reaching your teen who seems to have shut down, or improving your listening and connecting skills, please contact us!