 Parenting
Pathfinders: Tools for Raising Responsible Children - Section
11
Parenting Pathfinders Establish Healthy Boundaries with Children
Content:
LET GO STEP 4: GIVE UP NEED
You now need to insure that the boundaries you establish are maintained in your family
life with your adolescent and young adult children. To do this you will need to GIVE UP
THE NEED to have control over your children as well as with other people, places,
situations and conditions. To do this, you will need to stop doing the following control
behaviors which weaken your boundaries.
Control Behaviors Which
Weaken Boundaries
1. Need to Fix
You will need to LET GO and GIVE UP THE NEED to fix your children when you see that
they are hurting or in need. If you get caught up in the compulsive need to fix, you will
weaken your boundaries and become lost in trying to fix your children to the exclusion of
taking care of yourself.
2. Need to be a Caretaker
You will need to recognize that you have a compulsive trait of needing to take care of
people in need because you have a severe case of the "need to be needed"
syndrome. You will need to recognize that the more you give and take care of your
children, whom you perceive to be needy, the more your boundaries disappear and the less
of you is left.
3. Unchecked Idealism
You will need to recognize that you cannot control how your children should turn out.
You can only control how you think, feel and act towards your children. You cannot control
the outcomes of what they will become and how they will behave. You need to accept them
how they actually are right now on a day to day basis. You will need to work at tempering
your idealism so that you do not exhaust yourself, after allowing all of your boundaries
to collapse around you as you pursue your fantasy idealized family life with your
children.
4. Non-acceptance of Powerlessness
You need to work at accepting that you are powerless to control and change your
children as well as other people, places, things, situations and conditions. You are
competing with your Higher Power if you hold to the belief that you can control and change
your children. You will lose in the long run and you will be boundary-less and defenseless
from the onslaught of needs of your children, whom you believe you can change and control.
5. Lack of Belief in a Higher Power
You will never be able to maintain your boundaries with your children if you do not
have a belief in a Higher Power or God as you understand it to be. You need a Higher Power
over to whom you can let go of the uncontrollables and unchangeables in you life. Without
this resource to hand over these things to, you will be exhausted. In trying to meet your
children's needs, your boundaries will be non-existent and you will be ultimately lost in
the process.
To learn more about control issues and to develop tools to GIVE UP THE NEED to control
others, read the Tools for Handling Control Issues (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt,
Dubuque, Iowa, 1992). Once you have GIVEN UP THE NEED you are then ready for the last LET
GO Step.
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