 Parenting
Pathfinders: Tools for Raising Responsible Children - Section
11
Parenting Pathfinders Establish Healthy Boundaries with Children
Content:
LET GO Step 3: TAKE STEPS
You are now ready to TAKE THE STEPS to establish healthy boundaries
with your adolescent and young adult children. This involves actualizing the 5 areas of
boundaries for healthy family life. You will need to do the following boundary development
tasks.
Family Life Boundary
Development Tasks
1. Establish a Calendar
You and the older children who live at home need to set up a schedule by day, week,
month and year and keep to it. Be sure all the essential components: needed to have a
nurturing environment, self-nurturing, mutual nurturing and self-esteem enhancement, are
put in the calendar. Make sure that spending time on family enrichment is included in the
calendar. Present your calendar to your children and then set up a family calendar based
on the combination of the two.
2. Budget
Set up a budget of how you would spend the money which you bring into the family on a
weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Make sure you are honest about your actual income and do
not depend on credit as a source of income. Limit your expenditures on your older children
so that you are not irresponsibly squandering your money. Once you figure out your budget
then compare it with your actual expenditures over a week, month or year and then develop
a final budget which meshes this reality with sound fiscal responsibility taking.
3. Use of External Resources
Set up a set of rules and regulations about use of your external family resources. Be
clear about rules about use and misuse of them. Set up chores and work schedules to insure
that all of the resources are taken care of in a responsible way. Set up limits about car
ownership by older children, responsibility for personal insurance and general maintenance
expenses on the car. Set limits about the use of the family house and other property after
the adult children move out. Set limits on parental coverage of tuition, room, board, fees
and books for post high school education. Set limits on parental coverage of costs for
weddings, special events, birth of grandchildren and all expenses involved with the
grandchildren. Look at Section 5: Tracking Pathfinder Structures over the Lifespan for other ideas
on limit setting on external resources with older children.
4. Use of Talents, Skills and Abilities
Set up a set of rules about what you will and will not do in the relationship with your
talents, skills and abilities so that you will not feel raped or violated because you have
squandered your internal resources on the family.
5. Emotional Life with Children
Identify what you are willing to do and not do with your emotional life in you
relationship with your children. Identify when, where, how and why you are willing to do
what you will do. Set goals for you and your older children which fairly protect each
other. Develop open lines of communication so that all problems are openly discussed and
creatively resolved. Learn to say "NO" over and over again until it becomes a
habit and you feel no more guilt after saying it.
Use the Tools for a Relationship and the Tools for Communication
(Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992), and Marriage Workout - Tools for
Marital Enrichment (Messina, J.J., Advanced Development Systems Inc., Tampa, Florida,
1986), to assist you to take the steps necessary to develop healthy boundaries with your
older children. Once you have TAKEN STEPS to establish boundaries then you are ready for
the next step in the LET GO Process.
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