Sarah heaved a long sigh. She’d been working on major boundary issues in her therapy for a while now. She was seeing progress in resolving responsibility conflicts with her parents, her husband, and her kids. Yet today she introduced a new issue.
“I haven’t told you about this relationship before, though I guess I should have. I have tremendous boundary problems with this woman. She eats too much, and has an attacking tongue. She’s undependable—lets me down all the time. And she’s spent money of mine and hasn’t paid me back in years.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned her before?” I asked.
“Because she’s me,” Sarah replied.
Sarah was echoing the conflict most of us have. We learn that boundaries are biblical. We begin setting limits on others. We begin moving from taking too much responsibility to taking just enough. But how do we begin to set limits on ourselves? As Pogo Possum, cartoonist Walt Kelly’s popular swamp character, says, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
In this chapter, instead of looking at the control and manipulation of others, we’ll be looking at our responsibility to control our own bodies (1 Thess. 4:4). Instead of examining outer boundary conflicts with other people, we will be looking at our own internal boundary conflicts. This can get a little touchy. As the disgruntled country church member told his pastor as he left after the Sunday sermon, “You done stopped preachin’, and you done started meddlin’!”
Instead of this defensive posture, we are much better off to look humbly at ourselves. To ask for feedback from others. To listen to people we trust. And to confess, “I was wrong.”
Our Out-of-Control Soul
Eating
Teresa’s secret shame was becoming more difficult to keep a secret. Her five-foot-four frame could hide a little extra weight, but over the past few months she’d gradually moved into the mid-hundred mark. She hated it. Her dating life, her stamina, and her attitude toward herself were all affected.
She was out of control. In her successful but stressful career as an attorney, cookies and candy were the only place she could go when everything was falling down around her. Twelve-hour days meant lots of isolation, and absolutely nothing filled the void like fatty foods. No wonder they call it comfort food, Teresa would think.
What makes overeating especially painful is that overweight is visible to others. The overweight person feels enormous self-hate and shame about her condition. And, like others who suffer from out-of-control behaviors, the overweight person feels overwhelming shame for her behavior, which drives her away from relationship and back to food.
Both chronic and bingeing overeaters suffer from an internal self-boundary problem. For overeaters, food serves as a false boundary. They might use food to avoid intimacy by gaining weight and becoming less attractive. Or they might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the “comfort” from food is less scary than the prospect of real relationships, where boundaries would be necessary.
Money
A now-famous bumper sticker reads, “I can’t be overdrawn—I still have checks left!” People have tremendous problems in many different areas dealing with money, including the following:
• impulse spending
• careless budgeting
• living beyond one’s means
• credit problems
• chronically borrowing from friends
• ineffectual savings plans
• working more to pay all the bills
• enabling others
God intended for money to be a blessing to us and others: “Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:38). In fact, the Bible says that the problem isn’t money, it’s the love of money that is “a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6:10).
Most of us would certainly agree that we need to be in control of our finances. Saving money, keeping costs down, and shopping for discounts are all good things. It’s tempting to see money problems as simply a need for more income; however, the problem often isn’t the high cost of living—it’s the cost of high living.
The problem of our financial outgo exceeding our input is a self-boundary issue. When we have difficulty saying no to spending more than we should, we run the risk of becoming someone else’s servant: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7).
Time
Many people feel that their time is out of control. They are “eleventh-hour people,” constantly on the edge of deadlines. Try as they might, they find the day—every day— getting away from them. There just aren’t enough hours to accomplish their tasks. The word early doesn’t seem to be part of their personal experience. Some of the time binds these strugglers deal with are these:
• business meetings
• luncheon appointments
• project deadlines
• church and school activities
• holiday mailings
These people breeze into meetings fifteen minutes late and breathlessly apologize, talking about traffic, overwhelming job responsibilities, or kid emergencies.
People whose time is out of control inconvenience others whether they mean to or not. The problem often stems from one or more of the following causes:
1. Omnipotence. These people have unrealistic, somewhat grandiose expectations of what they can accomplish in a given amount of time. “No problem—I’ll do it” is their motto.
2. Over-responsibility for the feelings of others. They think that leaving a party too early will cause the host to feel abandoned.
3. Lack of realistic anxiety. They live so much in the present that they neglect to plan ahead for traffic, parking the car, or dressing for an outing.
4. Rationalization. They minimize the distress and inconvenience that others must put up with because of their lateness. They think, “They’re my friends—they’ll understand.”
The person with undeveloped time sell-boundaries ends up frustrating not only others, but himself. He ends the day without the sense that a “desire realized is sweet to the soul’ (Prov. 13:19 NASB). Instead, he is left with unrealized desires, half-baked projects, and the realization that tomorrow will begin with him running behind schedule.
Task Completion
A first cousin to the time boundary problem, task completion deals with “finishing well.” Most of us have goals in the love and work areas of life. We may wish to be a veterinarian or a lawyer. We may wish to own our own business or own a home in the country. We may wish to start a Bible study program or an exercise regimen.
We all would like to say about our tasks, whether large or small, what Paul said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim. 4:7-8). More eloquent in their simplicity are Jesus’ words on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Though they may be great starters, many Christians find themselves unable to be good finishers. For one reason or another, creative ideas don’t pan out. A regular schedule of operations becomes bogged down. Success looms, then is suddenly snatched away.
The problem with many poor finishers lies in one of the following causes:
1. Resistance to structure. Poor finishers feel that submitting to the discipline of a plan is a putdown.
2. Fear of success. Poor finishers are over-concerned that success will cause others to envy and criticize them. Better to shoot themselves in the foot than to lose their buddies.
3. Lack of follow-through. Poor finishers have an aversion to the boring “nuts and bolts” of turning the crank on a project. They are much more excited about birthing the idea, then turning it over to other people to execute it.
4. Distractibility. Poor finishers are unable to focus on a project until it’s done. They have often never developed competent concentration skills.
5. Inability to delay gratification. Poor finishers are unable to work through the pain of a project to experience the satisfaction of a job well done. They want to go directly to the pleasure. They are like children who want to eat dessert before they eat the well-balanced meal.
6. Inability to say no to other pressures. Poor finishers are unable to say no to other people and projects. They don’t have time to finish any job well.
Those with task completion problems often feel like two-year-olds in their favorite toy area. They’ll bang a hammer for a bit, vroom with a toy car, talk to a puppet, and then pick up a book. All in two minutes or less. It’s easy to see the boundary problems inherent in those with task completion problems. Their internal no hasn’t been developed enough to keep them focused on finishing things.
The Tongue
In a therapy group I was leading, a man held the floor for some time. He’d go off on tangents, change the subject, and spend inordinate amounts of time on irrelevant details. He couldn’t seem to get to the point. Other members were spacing out, dozing off, or becoming restless. Just as I was to speak to the man’s struggle with getting to the point, a woman in the group spoke up, saying bluntly, “bill, talk net, willya?”
“Talking net,” putting a net or boundary on their words, can be a struggle for many. How we use language can deeply affect the quality of our relationships. The tongue can be a source of both blessing and curse (James 3:9-10). It can be a blessing when we use our tongue to empathize, identify, encourage, confront, and exhort others. It can be a curse when we use it to:
• Talk nonstop to hide from intimacy
• Dominate conversations to control others
• Gossip sarcastic remarks, expressing indirect hostility
• Threaten someone, expressing direct hostility
• Flatter, instead of authentically praise
• Seduce
Many people who have difficulty setting verbal boundaries on themselves aren’t really aware of their problem. They are often genuinely surprised when a friend says to them, “Sometimes it seems like you interpret my commas as periods.”
I knew a woman who was desperately afraid that others would get to know her. She asked questions and talked quickly so that no one could turn the conversation toward her. She had only one problem: she had to take breaths to continue talking, and the breath created a space for someone else to say something. The woman resolved her problem, however, in an ingenious way; she drew her breaths in the middle of her sentences, rather than at the end. That kept people sufficiently off-balance so that she was rarely interrupted. An effective strategy, with only one problem: she had to keep finding new people to talk to. After a few rounds with her, people disappeared.
The Scriptures tell us to treat our words carefully: “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise” (Prov. 10:19). “A man of knowledge uses words with restraint” (Prov. 17:27). According to The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for “restrain” refers to “the free action of holding back something or someone. The actor has the power over the object.” It’s a boundary-laden term. We have the power to set boundaries on what comes out of our mouths.
When we can’t hold back, or set boundaries, on what comes from our lips, our words are in charge—not us. But we are still responsible for those words. Our words do not come from somewhere outside of us, as if we were a ventriloquist’s dummy. They are the product of our hearts. Our saying, “I didn’t mean that,” is probably better translated, “I didn’t want you to know I thought that about you.” We need to take responsibility for our words. “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” (Matt. 12:36).
Sexuality
As Christians are finding more safe places in the church to be honest about spiritual and emotional conflicts, sexual problems, especially for men, have emerged as a major issue. Such problems include compulsive masturbation, compulsive heterosexual or homosexual relationships, pornography, prostitution, exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, indecent liberties, child molestation, incest, and rape.
The individual caught up in an out-of-control sexual behavior generally feels deeply isolated and shameful. This keeps what is broken in the soul” sequestered in the darkness—out of the light of relationship with God and darkness—out of the light of relationship with God and others, where there can be neither help nor resolution. His sexuality takes on a life of its own, unreal and fantasy-driven. One man described it as a “not-me experience.” It was for him, as if the real him was watching his sexual actions from across the room. Others may feel so dead and detached that sexuality is the only way they feel alive.
The problem, however, is that, as in most internal boundary conflicts, sexual boundarylessness becomes a tyrant, demanding and insatiable. No matter how many orgasms are reached, the desire only deepens, and the inability to say no to one’s lusts drives one deeper into despair and hopelessness.
Alcohol and Substance Abuse
Probably the clearest examples of internal boundary problems, alcohol problems, alcohol and drug dependencies create devastation in the lives of addicts. Divorce, job loss, financial havoc, medical problems, and death are the fruits of the inability to set limits in these areas.
Most tragic are the increasingly younger children who are experimenting with drugs. Drug addiction is difficult for adults, who have some semblance of character and boundaries; for the child whose boundaries are delicate and forming, the results are often lifelong and debilitating.
Why Doesn’t My “No” Work?
“I’m throwing my no away,” Burt told me. “It works fine for setting limits on other people, but every time I try to complete my tasks on time, it breaks down. Where can I trade it in?”
Where indeed? As you read about the out-of-control areas above, you may have felt defeated and frustrated with yourself. You probably could identify with one or more of the problem areas, and you probably are no stranger to the discouragement of not having mature boundaries in these internal areas. What’s the problem? Why doesn’t our no work on ourselves?
There are at least three reasons for this.
1. We are our own worst enemies. An external problem is easier to deal with than an internal one. When we switch our focus from setting limits on other people to setting limits on ourselves, we make a major shift in responsibility. Previously, we were only responsible to, not for, the other party. Now we have a great deal more involvement—we are the other party. We are responsible for ourselves.
When you are around a critical person, the kind who finds fault with everything, you can set limits on your exposure to this person’s constant criticism. You can change subjects, rooms, houses, or continents. You can leave. But what if this critical person is in your own head? What if you are the person with the problem? What if you have met the enemy, and he is you?
2. We withdraw from relationship when we most need it. Jessica came to me for treatment of an eating disorder. She was thirty years old, and she had been bingeing since she was a teenager. I asked her about her previous attempts to solve this internal boundary problem.
“I try to work out and eat right,” she said. “But I always fall back.”
“Who do you talk to about this?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Jessica looked confused.
“Who do you tell about your eating problem when you can’t take it anymore?”
Tears welled up in Jessica’s eyes. “You’re asking too much. This is a private problem. Can’t I do this without anyone knowing?”
Since the Fall, our instincts have been to withdraw from relationship when we’re in trouble, when we most need other people. (Remember how Adam and Eve hid from God after they ate the forbidden fruit?) Due to our lack of security, our loss of grace, our shame, and our pride, we turn inward, rather than outward, when we’re in trouble. And that’s a problem. As the Preacher in Ecclesiastes puts it: “Woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help” (4:10 NRSV).
Such withdrawal happens in our hospital program time after time. Hurting people will begin to make attachments with staff or other patients. For the first time, they begin coming forth with their need for connection. Like a rose lifting its petals after a hard rain, they begin to relate and connect in the light of the grace of God and his people.
Then an unexpected difficulty will occur. Sometimes their depression will temporarily worsen as their pain inside is exposed. Sometimes traumatic memories will surface. Sometimes severe conflict will occur with family members. Instead of bringing these painful and frightening feelings and problems to their newfound relationships, these people will often retreat to their rooms to work out the problem. They’ll spend several hours or a day doing everything to get back under control. They’ll talk positively to themselves or read Scriptures compulsively to try to make themselves “feel better.”
It is only when this attempt at a solution breaks down that they finally realize that these spiritual pains and burdens need to be brought out of themselves to the body of Christ. To the isolated person, nothing feels more frightening, unsafe, or unwise. Such a person needs to feel very secure before she will risk taking her spiritual and emotional problems to other people.
And yet the Bible doesn’t recognize any other answer to our problems. Grace must come from the outside of ourselves to be useful and healing. Just as the branch withers without the vine (John 15:1-6), we can sustain neither life without the vine (John 15:1-6), we can sustain neither life nor emotional repair without bonding to God and others. God and his people are the fuel, the energy source from any problem is addressed. We need to be “joined and held together by every supporting ligament” (Eph. 4:16) of the body of Christ to heal and to grow up.
Whether our boundary issue is food, substances, sex, time, projects, the tongue, or money, we can’t solve it in a vacuum. If we could, we would. But the more we isolate ourselves, the harder our struggle becomes. Just like an untreated cancer can become life-threatening in a short time, self-boundary problems will worsen with increased aloneness.
3. We try to use willpower to solve our boundary problems. “I’ve got it solved!” Pete was excited about his newfound victory over his overspending. A dedicated Christian and a leader in his church, he was intensely concerned about his out-of-control finances. “I made a vow to God and myself that I’ll never spend beyond my budget again! It’s so simple, but so true!”
Not wanting to burst Pete’s bubble, I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. I didn’t have to wait long. The next week he came in, feeling discouraged and hopeless.
“I just couldn’t stop myself,” he lamented. “I went out and bought sports equipment; then my wife and I purchased new furniture. It was just what we needed. The price was right. The only problem was that we couldn’t afford it. I guess I’m hopeless.”
Pete wasn’t hopeless, but his philosophy, popular among Christians, certainly was. He had been trying to use willpower to solve his boundary problems, probably the most common approach to out-of-control behavior.
The willpower approach is simple. Whatever the problem behavior is, just stop doing it. In other words, “just say no.” Imperatives such as “Choose to stop,” “Decide to say no,” and “Make a commitment to never do it again” abound in this approach.
The problem with this approach is that it makes an idol out of the will, something God never intended. Just as our hearts and minds are distorted by the Fall, so is our power to make right decisions. Will is only strengthened by relationship; we can’t make commitments alone. God told Moses to encourage and strengthen Joshua (Deut. 3:28); he didn’t tell Moses to tell Joshua to “just say no.”
If we depend on willpower alone, we are guaranteed to fail. We are denying the power of the relationship promised in the cross. If all we need is our will to overcome evil, we certainly don’t need a Savior (1 Cor. 1:17). The truth is, willpower alone is useless against self-boundary struggles:
Why do you submit to [the world’s] rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Col. 2:20-23)
The King James Bible translates the Greek word for “self-imposed worship” as “will-worship.” In other words, these self-denying practices that appear so spiritual don’t stop stop out-of-control behavior. The boundaryless part of the soul simply becomes more resentful under the domination of the will—and it rebels. Especially after we make statements as, “I will never” and “I will always,” we act out with a vengeance. Jessica’s indulgence in food, Pete’s indulgence in money, someone else’s indulgence in foolish or slanderous conversation, or still another’s determination never to be a project again will not be healed by “white-knuckling it.”
Establishing Boundaries with Yourself
Learning to be mature in self-boundaries is not easy. Many obstacles hinder our progress; however, God desires our maturity and self-control even more than we do. He’s on our team as an exhorter, encourager, and implorer (1 Thess. 2:11—12). One way to begin developing limits on out-of-control behavior is to apply a modified version of the boundary checklist we used in Chapter 8:
1. What are the symptoms? Look at the destructive fruit you may be exhibiting by not being able to say no to yourself. You may be experiencing depression, anxiety, panic, phobias, rage, relationship struggles, isolation, work problems, or psychosomatic problems.
All of these symptoms can be related to a difficulty in setting limits on your own behavior. Use them as a road map to begin identifying the particular boundary problem you’re having.
2. What are the roots? Identifying the causes of your self-boundary problems will assist you in understanding your own contribution to the problem (how you have sinned), your developmental injuries (how you have been sinned against), and the significant relationships that may have contributed to the problem.
Some possible roots of self-boundary conflicts include:
Lack of training. Some people never learned to accept its, to pay the consequences of their actions, or to delay gratification when they were growing up. For example, they may never have experienced any consequences for dawdling as a child.
Rewarded destructiveness. People who come from families which the mom or dad was an alcoholic may have learned that out-of-control behavior brings relationship. The family came together when the alcoholic member drank.
Distorted need. Some boundary problems are legitimate, God-given needs in disguise. God gave us sexual desire both to reproduce ourselves and to enjoy our spouses. The pornography addict has diverted this good desire; he feels real and alive only when acting out.
Fear of relationship. People really want to be loved but their out-of-control behavior (i.e., overeating, overworking) keeps others away. Some people use their tongues to keep other people at bay.
Unmet emotional hungers. We all need love during the first few years of life. If we don’t receive this love, we hunger for it for the rest of our lives. This hunger for love is so powerful that when we don’t find it in relationships with other people, we look for it in other places, such as in food, in work, in sexual activity, or in spending money.
Being under the law. Many Christians raised in legalistic environments were not permitted to make decisions for themselves. When they try to make their own decisions, they feel guilty. This guilt forces them to rebel in destructive ways. Food addictions and compulsive spending are often reactions against strict
Covering emotional hurt. People who are injured emotionally, who were neglected or abused as children, disguise their pain by overeating, drinking too much, or working too much. They may abuse substances to distract from the real pain of being unloved, unwanted, and alone. If they were to stop using these disguises, their isolation would be intolerable.
3. What is the boundary conflict? Take a look at your particular self-boundary problems in relation to eating, money, time, task completion, the tongue, sexuality, alcohol and substance abuse. These seven areas aren’t exhaustive, though they cover a great deal of territory. Ask God for insight into what other areas of your life are out of God for insight into what other areas of your life are out of control.
4. Who needs to take ownership? At this point, take the painful step of taking responsibility for your out-of-control behavior. The behavior pattern may be directly traceable to family problems, neglect, abuse, or trauma. In other words, our boundary conflicts may not be all our fault. They are, however, our responsibility.
5. What do you need? It’s useless to try to deal with your boundary conflicts with yourself until you’re actively developing safe, trusting, grace-and-truth relationships with others. You are severely hampered in gaining either insight into or control over yourself when you are disconnected from God’s source of spiritual and emotional fuel.
Plugging in to other people is often frustrating for “do-it-yourself” people who would like a how-to manual for solving out-of-control behaviors just as they would buy to teach themselves piano, plumbing, or golf. They wish to get this boundary setting business over with quickly.
The problem is that many people with self-boundary struggle are also quite isolated from deep relationships. They have no “rootedness” in God or others (Eph. 3:17). Thus, they have to take what they think are steps backward to learn to connect with others. Connecting with people is a time consuming, risky, and painful process. Finding the right people, group, or church is hard enough, but after admitting your need for others may be even more difficult.
Do-it-yourself people will often fall back into a cognitive willpower approach, simply because it’s not as slow or as risky. They’ll often say things like, “Attachment is not what I want. I have an out-of-control behavior, and I need relief from the pain!” Though we can certainly understand their dilemma, they’re heading toward another quick-fix dead end. Symptomatic relief—trying to solve a problem by only dealing with the symptoms—generally leads to more symptoms. Jesus described this process in a parable:
When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11:24-26)
Evil can take over the empty house of our souls. Even when our lives seem to be in order, isolation guarantees spiritual vulnerability. It’s only when our house is full of the love of God and others that we can resist the wiles of the Devil. Plugging in is neither an option, nor a luxury; it is a spiritual and emotional life-and-death issue.
6. How do I begin? Once you have identified your boundary problem and owned it, you can do something about it. Here are some ways to begin practicing setting boundaries on yourself.
Address your real need. Often, out-of-control patterns disguise a need for something else. You need to address the underlying need before you can deal with the out-of-control behavior. For example, impulsive eaters may discover that food is a way to stay separate and safe from romantic and sexual intimacy. Their fear of being faced with those kinds of emotionally laden situations may cause them to use food as a boundary. As their internal boundaries with the opposite sex become firmer, they can give up their destructive food boundary. They learn to ask for help for the real problem— not just for the symptomatic problem.
Allow yourself to fail. Addressing your real need is no guarantee that your out-of-control behavior will disappear. Many people who address the real issue underneath a self-boundary problem are often disappointed that the problem keeps recurring. They think, “Well, I joined a support group at church, but I still have problems being on time, or viewing pornography, or spending money, or talking out of turn. Was all this for naught?”
No. The recurrence of destructive patterns is evidence of God’s sanctifying, maturing, and preparing us for eternity. We need to continue to practice to learn things. The same process that we use to learn to drive a car, swim, or learn a foreign language is the one we use for learning better self-boundaries.
We need to embrace failure instead of trying to avoid it. Those people who spend their lives trying to avoid failure are also eluding maturity. We are drawn to Jesus because he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). People who are growing up are also drawn to individuals bear battle scars, worry furrows, and tear marks on their faces. Their lessons can be trusted, much more than the unlined faces of those who have never failed—and so have never truly lived.
Listen to empathic feedback from others. As you fail in setting boundaries on yourself, you need others who will let you know about it in a caring way. Many times, you are unaware of your own failures. Sometimes you may not truly understand the extent of the damage your lack of boundaries causes in the lives of those you care about. Other believers can provide perspective and support.
Keith had a difficult time returning money to others when they had loaned it to him. He wasn’t broke. He wasn’t selfish. He was just forgetful. He had little awareness of the discomfort he caused those who lent him money.
One afternoon a friend who had loaned him money several months before dropped by his office.
Keith,” his friend said, “Several times I’ve asked you about the money I lent you. I still haven’t heard from you. I don’t think you’re intentionally ignoring my requests. At the same time I wanted to let you know that your forgetfulness has been hard on me. I had to cancel a vacation because I didn’t have the money. Your forgetfulness is hurting me, and it’s hurting our friendship.”
Keith was astonished. He hadn’t had a clue that such a little thing to him might mean so much to a close friend. Deeply remorseful over the loss his friend had suffered, he wrote a check immediately.
In a non-condemning, non-nagging manner, Keith’s friend had helped him become more aware of his self-boundary problem. He used the empathy Keith felt for him as a close friend. True godly remorse for causing his friend pain was a powerful motivator for Keith to become more responsible. When others in our support system let us know responsible. When others in our support system let us know how our lack of self-boundaries hurts them, we are motivated by love, not by fear.
Biblically based support groups, which provide empathy and clear feedback, keep people responsible by letting them see the effect their actions have on another. When one member tells another, “Your uncontrolled behavior makes me want to stay away from you. I don’t feel that I can trust you when you act like that,” the out-of-control person isn’t being parented or policed. He is hearing truth in love from a peer. He’s hearing how what he does helps or damages those he loves. This kind of confrontation builds an empathy-based morality, a love-based self-control.
Welcome consequences as a teacher. Learning about sowing and reaping is valuable. It teaches us that we suffer losses when we aren’t responsible. The impulsive overeater has medical and social difficulties. The overspender faces bankruptcy court. The chronically late person misses plane flights and important meetings, and loses friendships. The procrastinator faces losses of promotions and bonuses. And on and on.
We need to enter God’s training school of learning to suffer for our irresponsibility. Not all suffering should be embraced; however, when our own lack of love or responsibility causes the suffering, pain becomes our teacher.
Learning how to develop better self-boundaries is an orderly process. First, we are confronted about the destructiveness of our behavior by others. Then consequences will follow if we don’t heed the feedback. Words precede actions and give us a chance to turn from our destructiveness before we have to suffer.
God doesn’t glory in our suffering. Just as a loving father’s heart breaks when he sees his children in pain, God wants to spare us pain. But when his words and the feedback of his other children don’t reach us, consequences are the of his other children don’t reach us, consequences are the only way to keep us from further damage. God is like the parent who warns his teenager that drinking will cause a loss will have bad consequences for you.” Then, if it’s not heeded, car privileges are yanked. This painful consequence prevents a possible serious catastrophe: a drunk-driving accident.
Surround yourself with people who are loving and supportive. As you hear feedback and suffer consequences, maintain close contact with your support network. Your difficulties are too much to bear alone. You need others who will be loving and supportive, but who will not rescue.
Generally speaking, friends of people with self-boundary problems make one of two errors:
(1) They become critical and parental. When the person has failed, they adopt an “I told you so” attitude, or say things like, “Now, what did you learn from your experience?” This encourages the person to either look elsewhere for a friend (no one needs more than two parents), or simply avoid the criticism, instead of learning from consequences. “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently” (Gal. 6:1).
(2) They become rescuers. They give in to their impulse to save the person from suffering. They call the boss and tell them their spouse was sick when he or she was drunk. They lend more money when they shouldn’t. They hold up the entire dinner for the latecomer, instead of going ahead with the meal.
Rescuing someone is not loving them. God’s love lets people experience consequences. Rescuers hope that by once again bailing out the out-of-control person, they’ll reap a loving, responsible person. They hope to control the other person.
It’s far better to be empathic, but at the same time refuse to be a safety net: “I’m sorry you lost another job this year, but I won’t lend you any more money until you’ve paid back the other loan. However, I’m available to talk to for support.” This approach will show people how serious you are about developing self-boundaries. The sincere searcher will value this approach and will take you up on your offer of support. The manipulator will resent the limits and quickly look for an easier touch somewhere else.
This five-point formula for developing self-boundaries is cyclical. That is, as you deal with real needs, fail, get empathic feedback, suffer consequences, and are restored, you build stronger internal boundaries each time. As you stay with your goal and with the right people, you will build a sense of self-restraint that can truly become part of your character for life.
If You Are a Victim
Establishing boundaries for yourself is always hard. It will be especially difficult if your boundaries were severely violated in childhood. No one who has avoided childhood through victimization can truly understand what these individuals go through. Of all the injuries that can be endured, this type causes severe spiritual and emotional damage.
A victim is a person who has, while in a helpless state, been injured by the exploitation of another. Some victimization is verbal, some is physical, some is sexual, and some is satanically ritualistic. All cause extreme damage to the character structure of a child, who then grows up to adulthood with spiritual, emotional, and cognitive distortions. In each case, however, three factors remain constant: helplessness, injury, and exploitation.
Some results of victimization are these:
• depression
• compulsive disorders
• impulsive disorders
• isolation
• inability to trust others
• inability to form close attachments
• inability to set limits
• poor judgment in relationships
• further exploitation in relationships
• deep sense of pervasive badness
• shame
• guilt
• chaotic lifestyle
• sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness
• unexplainable terror and panic attacks
• phobias
• rage attacks
• suicidal feelings and thoughts
Victimization has long-lasting and far-reaching effects on the lives of adult survivors. Healing for victims is difficult because their developmental processes have been damaged or interrupted by abuse. The most primary damage done is the victim loses a sense of trust. Trust, the ability to depend on ourselves and others in times of need, is a basic spiritual and emotional survival need. We need to be able to trust our own perceptions of reality and to be able to let significant people matter to us.
Our ability to trust ourselves is based on our experience of others as trustworthy. People who are “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Ps. 1:3) feel firm because of the by streams of love coming from God and others in their life.
Victims often lose a sense of trust because the perpetrator was someone they knew as children, someone who was important to them. When the relationship became damaging to them, their sense of trust became broken.
Another damaging effect of abuse or molestation is the destruction of a sense of ownership over the victim’s soul. In fact, victims often feel that they are public property—that their resources, body, and time should be available to others just for the asking.
Another injury due to victimization is a deep, pervasive sense of being “all-bad,” wrong, dirty, or shameful. No their affirming others are of their loveableness and their attributes, victims are convinced that, underneath it all, there is no good inside themselves. Because of the severity of their injuries, many victims have over-permeable boundaries. They take on badness that isn’t theirs. They begin believing that the way they were treated is the way they should be treated. Many victims think that, since they were they were bad or evil thousands of times, it certainly must be true.
Boundaries as an Aid to the Victim
Boundary work as described in this book can be extremely helpful in moving victims toward restoration and healing. However, in many cases the severe nature of the need is such that the victim will be unable to set boundaries without professional help. We strongly urge abuse victims to seek out a counselor who can guide them in establishing and maintaining appropriate boundaries.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Boundaries and Your Work
In Sunday school we were studying Adam and Eve and the Fall. I learned that the Fall was the beginning of everything “bad.” That day I went home and said to my mother, “I don’t like Adam and Eve. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have to clean up my room!”
Work at age eight wasn’t fun, and because it wasn’t fun, it was bad. Because it was bad, it was Adam’s fault. A simple theological theory for a youngster, but it was youthful heresy. Work existed before the Fall; it was always part of God’s plan for humanity. He planned for people to do two things. They would subdue and they would rule (Gen. 1:28). They would bring the earth under their domain, and they would manage it. That sounds a lot like work!
But because Eden was paradise, our difficulties with work came later, after the Fall. God said to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19).
Other aspects of the Fall also affected our work. The first is the tendency toward disownership. We talked in earlier chapters about the boundary problem of not taking responsibility for what is ours. This started in the garden when Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame on to another for their original act of sinning. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:11-13). They were disowning their responsibility and blaming another. Their theme was “Get the attention off of me.” This tendency to blame another is a key work problem.
The Fall also divided love from work. Before the Fall, Adam was connected to the love of God and from that loved state, he worked. After the Fall, he was not motivated out of perfect love, but he had to work as a part of the fallen world’s curse and the law. The love-motivated “want to” became a law-motivated “should.”
Paul tells us the law’s “should” increases our wish to rebel (Rom. 5:20); it makes us angry at what we “should” do (Rom. 4:15); and it arouses our motivations to do the wrong unable to take responsibility and work effectively by owning its behaviors, talents, and choices. No wonder we have work problems.
In this chapter, we want to look at how boundaries can help resolve many work-related problems, as well as how they can help you to be happier and more fulfilled at the work you do.
Work and Character Development
Christians often have a warped way of looking at work. Unless someone is working “in the ministry,” they see his work as secular. However, this view of work distorts the biblical picture. All of us—not only full-time ministers— have gifts and talents that we contribute to humanity. We all have a vocation, a “calling” into service. Wherever we work, whatever we do, we are to do “unto the Lord” (Col. 3:23).
Jesus used parables about work to teach us how to grow spiritually. These parables deal with money, with completing tasks, with faithful stewardship of a job, and with honest emotional dealings in work. They all teach character development in the context of relating to God and others. They teach a work ethic based on love under God.
Work is a spiritual activity. In our work, we are made in the image of God, who is himself a worker, a manager, a creator, a developer, a steward, and a healer. To be a Christian is to be a co-laborer with God in the community of humanity. By giving to others we find true fulfillment.
The New Testament teaches that jobs offer more than temporal fulfillment and rewards on earth. Work is the place to develop our character in preparation for the work that we will do forever. With that in mind, let’s look at how setting boundaries in the workplace can help us to grow spiritually.
Problems in the Workplace
A lack of boundaries creates problems in the workplace. In consulting for corporations, I have seen lack of boundaries as the major problem in many management squabbles. If people took responsibility for their own work and set clear limits, most of the problems for which I get consulted would not exist.
Let’s see how applying boundaries can solve some common problems in the workplace.
Problem #1: Getting Saddled with Another Person’s Responsibilities
Susie is an administrative assistant in a small company that plans training sessions for industry. She’s responsible for booking the training sessions and managing the speakers’ schedules. A co-worker. Jack, is responsible for the training facilities. He takes the materials to the site, sets up the equipment, and orders the food. Together, Susie and Jack make the events happen.
After a few months of really liking her work, Susie began to lose energy. Eventually, her friend and co-worker, Lynda, asked her what was wrong. Susie couldn’t put her finger on the problem at first. Then she realized: The problem was Jack!
Jack had been asking Susie to “pick this up for me while you’re out,” or “please bring this box of materials to the workshop.” Slowly, Jack was shifting his responsibilities onto Susie.
“You have to stop doing Jack’s work,” Lynda told Susie. “Just do your own work and don’t worry about him.”
“But what if things go wrong?” Susie asked.
Lynda shrugged. “Then they’ll blame Jack. It’s not your responsibility.”
“Jack will be angry with me for not helping,” Susie said.
“Let him,” said Lynda. “His anger can’t hurt you as much as his poor work habits can.”
So Susie began to set limits on Jack. She told him, “I will not have time to bring the materials for you this week.” And when Jack ran out of time to do things himself, Susie said, “I’m sorry that you have not done that before now, and I understand that you are in a bind. Maybe next time you will plan better. That’s not my job.”
Some trainers were angry that their equipment was not set up, and customers were angry that no food was provided for the break. But the boss tracked down the problem to the person who was responsible—Jack—and told him to shape up, or find another job. In the end, Susie began to like again, and Jack began to get more responsible. All because Susie set boundaries and stuck to them.
If you are being saddled with another person’s responsibilities and feel resentful, you need to take responsibility for your feelings, and realize that your unhappiness is not your co-worker’s fault, but your own. In this as in any other boundary conflict, you first must take responsibility for boundary conflict, yourself.
Then you must act responsibly to your co-worker. Go to your co-worker and explain your situation. When he asks you to do something that is not your responsibility, say no and refuse to do whatever it is that he wants you to do. If he angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and empathize with his anger. Don’t get angry back. To fight anger with anger is to get hooked into his game. Keep your emotional distance and say, “I am sorry if this upsets you. But that job is not my responsibility. I hope you get it! Worked out.”
If he continues to argue, tell him that you are finished discussing it; he can come and find you when he is ready to talk about something else. Do not fall into the trap of justifying why you can’t do his work for him. You will be slipping into his thinking that you should do his work if you are able to, and he will try to find a way that you can. You owe no one an explanation about why you will not do something: that is not your responsibility.
Many over-responsible people who work next to under-responsible people bear the consequences for their coworkers. Always covering for them, or bailing them out, they are not enjoying their work or their relationships with these people. Their lack of boundaries is hurting them, as well as keeping the other person from growing. If you are one of these people, you need to learn to set boundaries.
Sometimes, however, a co-worker will genuinely need some extra help. It is perfectly legitimate to bail out a responsible co-worker, or to make special concessions to a colleague who uses those concessions responsibly to get well. This is love, and good companies operate lovingly.
In our work as psychologists at the same hospital, we often cover hospital duty for each other or take each other’s on call” time. But if one of us started taking advantage of the other, we would need to stop that. Covering for the other at that point would not be helpful, but would enable a bad pattern.
Favors and sacrifices are part of the Christian life. Enabling is not. Learn to tell the difference by seeing if your giving is helping the other to become better or worse. The Bible requires responsible action out of the one who is given to. If you do not see it after a season, set limits (Luke 13:9).
Problem #2: Working Too Much Overtime
When I first went into practice, I hired a woman for twenty hours a week to run my office. On her second day in the office, I gave her a pile of things to do. About ten minutes later, she knocked at my door, stack of papers in hand.
“What can I do for you, Laurie?” I asked.
“You have a problem,” she told me.
“I do? What is it?” I asked, not having the vaguest idea what she was talking about.
“You hired me for twenty hours a week, and you have just given me about forty hours of work. Which twenty would you like done?”
She was right. I did have a problem. I had not managed my workload very well. I was either going to have to spend more on help, cut back on projects, or hire someone else. But she was right: it was my problem, not hers. I had to take responsibility for it and fix it. Laurie was telling me what that ever-present sign says: “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Many bosses aren’t so lucky. Their employees take responsibility for their lack of planning and never set limits on them. They are never forced to look at their lack of boundaries until it’s too late, until they have lost a good employee to exhaustion or burnout. Such bosses need clear limits, but many employees are afraid to set them, as Laurie did, because they need the job or they fear disapproval.
If you are in a situation in which you’re doing lots of extra work because you “need the job” and because you are afraid of being let go, you have a problem. If you are working more overtime than you want to, you are in bondage to your job. You are a slave, not an employee under contract. Clear and responsible contracts tell all parties involved what is expected of them, and they can be enforced. Jobs should have clear descriptions of duties and qualifications.
As hard as it sounds, you need to take responsibility for yourself and take steps to change your situation. Here are some suggested steps you may wish to take:
1. Set boundaries on your work. Decide how much overtime you are willing to do. Some overtime during seasonal crunches may be expected of you.
2. Review your job description, if one exists.
3. Make a list of the tasks you need to complete in the next month. Make a copy of the list and assign your own priority to each item. Indicate on this copy any tasks that are not part of your job description.
4. Make an appointment to see your boss to discuss your job overload. Together you should review the list of tasks need to complete in the next month. Have your boss prioritize the tasks. If your boss wants all the tasks done, and you cannot complete these tasks in the time you are willing to give, your boss may need to hire temporary help to complete those tasks. You may also wish to review your job description with your boss at this time if you think you are doing things that fall outside your domain.
If your boss still has unreasonable expectations of you, you may wish to take a co-worker or two along with you to a second meeting (according to the biblical model in Matthew 18), or you may wish to discuss your problem with the appropriate person in your personnel department. If even then he remains unreasonable about what he thinks you can accomplish, you may need to begin looking for other job opportunities within your company or outside.
You may need to go to night school and get some further training to open up other opportunities. You may need to chase down hundreds or employment ads and send out stacks of resumes. (Consult the book How to Get a Job by James Bramlett for information on job searches.) You may wish to start your own business. You may wish to start an emergency fund to survive between quitting your present Job and starting a new one.
Whatever you do, remember that your job overload is your responsibility and your problem. If your job is driving you crazy, you need to do something about it. Own the problem. Stop being a victim of an abusive situation and start setting some limits.
Problem #3: Misplaced Priorities
We have talked about setting limits on someone else. You also need to set limits on yourself. You need to realize how much time and energy you have, and manage your work accordingly. Know what you can do and when you can do it, and say no to everything else. Learn to know your limits and enforce them, as Laurie did. Say to your team or your boss, “If I am going to do A today, I will not be able to do B until Wednesday. Is that okay or do we need to rethink which one I need to be working on?”
Effective workers do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they spend their time on the most important things. Many people do excellent work but allow themselves to get sidetracked by unimportant things; they may do unimportant things very well! They feel like they are doing a great job, but their boss is upset because essential goals are not being met. Then they feel unappreciated and resentful because they have put out so much effort. They were working hard, but they weren’t placing boundaries on what they allowed to take up their time, and the really important things did not get their attention.
Say no to the unimportant, and say no to the inclination to do less than your best. If you are doing your best work on the most important things, you will reach your goals.
In addition to saying no to the unimportant, you need to make a plan to accomplish the important things, and erect some fences around your tasks. Realize your limits, and make sure you do not allow work to control your life. Having limits will force you to prioritize. If you make a commitment to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, you may say yes to everything. Say yes to the best, and sometimes you may need to say no to the good.
One man’s ministry required a lot of travel, so he and his wife put their heads together and decided that he would spend no more than one hundred nights a year on the road. When he gets an offer he has to check his time budget and see if this is something he wants to spend some of his nights on. This plan forces him to be more selective in his travel, thereby saving time for the rest of his life.
A company president who was allowing work to keep him away from home too much made a commitment to spend only forty hours a week in the office. At first, he really struggled because he wasn’t used to budgeting his time and commitments so closely. Slowly though, when he realized that he only had so much time, he began to spend it more wisely. He even got more accomplished because he was forced to work smarter.
Work will grow to fill the time you have set aside for it. If a meeting does not have an agenda with time limits, discussion could be endless. Allot time for certain things, and then keep your limits. You will work smarter and like your work more.
Take a lesson from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who, seeing Moses’ lack of boundaries, asked him why he was working so hard (Exod. 18:14-27).
“Because the people need me,” Moses said.
“What you are doing is not good,” Jethro replied. “You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone” (vv. 17-18). Even though Moses was doing good work, Jethro saw that he was going to burn himself out. Moses had allowed good work to go too far. Limits on good things keen them good.
Problem #4: Difficult Co-workers
A personnel counselor will often send someone to our hospital program because of stress at work. When these situations are unraveled, the “stress at work” often turns out to be somebody at the office who is driving the stressed-out person crazy. This person in the office or workplace has a strong influence over the emotional life of the person in pain, and he or she does not know how to deal with it.
In this case you need to remember the Law of Power: You only have the power to change yourself. Yow can’t change another person. You must see yourself as the problem, not the other person. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. Because you cannot change another person, you are out of control. The real problem lies in how you are relating to the problem person. You are the one in pain, and only you have the power to fix it.
Many people have found immense relief in the thought that they have no control over another person and that they must focus on changing their reactions to that person. They must refuse to allow that person to affect them. This idea is life changing, the beginning of true self-control.
Problem #5: Critical Attitudes
Stress is often caused by working with or for someone who is supercritical. People will get hooked into either trying to win over the critical person, which can almost never be done, or by allowing the person to provoke them to anger. Some people internalize the criticism and get down on themselves. All of these reactions indicate an inability to stand apart from the critical person and keep one’s boundaries.
Allow these critical people to be who they are, but keep yourself separate from them and do not internalize their opinion of you. Make sure you have a more accurate appraisal of yourself, and then disagree internally.
You may also want to confront the overly critical person according to the biblical model (Matt. 18). At first tell her how you feel about her attitude and the way it affects you. If she is wise, she will listen to you. If not, and her attitude is disruptive to others as well, two or more of you might want to talk to her. If she will not agree to change, you may want to tell her that you do not wish to talk with her until she gets her attitude under control.
Or you can follow the company’s grievance policy. The important thing to remember is that you can’t control her, but you can choose to limit your exposure to her, either physically or emotionally distancing yourself from her. This is self-control.
Avoid trying to gain the approval of this sort of person. It will never work, and you will only feel controlled. And avoid getting in arguments and discussions. You will never win. Remember the proverb, “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you” (Prov. 9:7-8). If you allow them to draw thinking that you will change them, you are asking them for trouble. Stay separate. Keep your boundaries. Don’t get sucked into their game.
Problem #6: Conflicts with Authority
If you are having trouble getting along with your boss, you may be having “transference feelings.” Transference is when you experience feelings in the present that really belong to some unfinished business in the past.
Transference happens frequently with bosses because they are authority figures. The boss-employee relationship can trigger authority conflicts you might have. You can begin to have strong reactions that are not appropriate to the current relationship.
Suppose your supervisor tells you that he wants something done differently. Immediately you feel “put down.” You think, He never thinks I do anything right. I’ll show him. Your supervisor may have made the comment in passing, but the feelings it triggered were very strong indeed. The reality is that the interaction may be tapping into unresolved hurt from past authority relationships, such as parents or teachers.
When a transference relationship starts, you may begin to act out all the old patterns you did with parents. This never works. You become a child on the job.
To have boundaries is to take responsibility for your transference. If you find yourself having strong reactions to someone, take some time and look inside to see if the feelings are familiar. Do they remind you of someone from the past? Did Mom or Dad treat you like that? Do they have the same personality as this person?
You are responsible for working out these feelings. Until you face your own feelings, you can’t even see who others really are. You are looking at them through your own distortions, through your own unfinished business. When you see others clearly without transference, you will know how to deal with them.
Another example would be strong feelings of competition with a co-worker. This may represent some competitive relationship from the past, such as sibling rivalry, that has not been worked through. Whenever you experience strong feelings, see them as part of your responsibility. This will lead you to any unfinished business and healing, as well as keep you from acting irrationally toward co-workers and bosses. Leave the past in the past, deal with it, and do not allow it to interfere with present relationships.
Problem #7: Expecting Too Much of Work
People increasingly come to the workplace wanting the company be a “family.” In a society where the family, church, and community are not the support structures they once were, people look to their colleagues for the emotional support a family once provided. This lack of boundaries between the personal and work life is fraught with all sorts difficulties.
The workplace ideally should be supportive, safe, and nurturing. But this atmosphere should primarily support the employee in work-related ways—to help her learn, improve, and get a job done. The problem arises when someone wants the job to provide what he the job to provide what her parents did not provide for her: primary nurturing, relationship, self-esteem, and approval. Work is not set up this way, nor is it what the typical job asks of someone. The inherent conflict in this set-up is this: The job expects adult functioning, and the person wants childhood needs met. These differing expectations will inevitably collide.
Health comes from owning unmet childhood needs and working them out. The problem is that the workplace is not the place to do that. There are expectations at work. They will ask from you without giving because they are going to pay you for your work. They are not obligated to provide all the emotional support you need.
You need to make sure you are meeting your needs for support and emotional repair outside of work. Plug into supportive and healing networks that will help you to grow out of your emotional hurts and unmet needs, and build you up so you can function well at the job, in the adult world that has adult expectations. Get your relationship needs met outside of work, and then you will be able to work the best without getting your needs mixed up with what the company needs from you. Keep your boundaries firm; protect those hurt places from the workplace, which is not only not set up to heal, but also may wound unintentionally.
Problem #8: Taking Work-Related Stress Home
Just as we should keep good boundaries on our personal issues and keep them out of the workplace, we need to keep some boundaries on work and keep it out of the home. This generally has two components.
The first is emotional. Conflicts at work need to be dealt with and worked through so they do not begin to affect the rest of your life. If denied, they can cause major depressions and other illnesses that begin to spill over into other areas of life.
Make sure you understand work issues and face them directly so that work does not emotionally control your life. Find out why a certain co-worker is able to get to you, or why your boss is able to control the rest of your life. Find out why your successes or failures on the job are able to bring you up or down. These important character issues need to be worked through. Otherwise, the job will own you.
The second component is finite things such as time, energy, and other resources. Make sure that the job, which is literally never done, does not continue to spill over into personal life and cost you relationships and other things that matter. Put limits on special projects that are going to take more time than usual, and make sure overtime does not become a pattern. One company we know has such a high value for family that they dock people for working overtime! They want them to put limits on their work and be home with the family. Find out your own limits and live by them. These are good boundaries.
Problem #9; Disliking Your Job
Boundaries are where our identity comes from. Boundaries define what is me and what is not me. Our work is part of our identity in that it taps into our particular giftedness and the exercise of those gifts in the community.
However, many people are unable to ever find a true work identity. They stumble from job to job, never really finding anything that is “them.” More often than not, this is a boundary problem. They have not been able to own their own gifts, talents, wants, desires, and dreams because they are unable to set boundaries on others’ definitions and expectations of them.
This happens with people who have not separated from church and the family they grew up in. A pastor was having great difficulty with his church and the board of elders. Finally, right in the middle of a consistory meeting, he said, “I never wanted to be a pastor anyway. It was my mother’s wish, not mine.” He did not have good enough boundaries with his mother to define his own career path. As a result, he had fused with her wishes and was miserable. His heart had not been in it from the start.
This can happen also with friends and culture. Others’ expectations can be very strong influences. You must make sure that your boundaries are strong enough that you do not let others define you. Instead, work with God to find out who you really are and what kind of work you are made for. Romans 12:2 speaks of having boundaries against these kinds of pressures from others: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” You should have a realistic expectation of yourself based on who you really are, your own true self with your own particular giftedness. You can only do this with boundaries that stand up and say, “This is me, and that is not me.’ Stand up against others’ expectations of you.
Finding Your Life’s Work
Finding your life’s work involves taking risks. First you need to firmly establish your identity, separating yourself from those you are attached to and following your desires. You must take ownership of how you feel, how you think, and what you want. You must assess your talents and limitations. And then you must begin to step out as God leads you.
For God wants you to discover and use your gifts to his glory. He asks only that you include him in the process: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this” (Ps. 37:4-5).
God also, however, calls you to be accountable for what you do: “Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment” (Eccl. 11:9).
As you develop your talents, look at your work as a partnership between you and God. He has given you gifts, and he wants you to develop them. Commit your way to the Lord, and you will find your work identity. Ask him to help.
Work at age eight wasn’t fun, and because it wasn’t fun, it was bad. Because it was bad, it was Adam’s fault. A simple theological theory for a youngster, but it was youthful heresy. Work existed before the Fall; it was always part of God’s plan for humanity. He planned for people to do two things. They would subdue and they would rule (Gen. 1:28). They would bring the earth under their domain, and they would manage it. That sounds a lot like work!
But because Eden was paradise, our difficulties with work came later, after the Fall. God said to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19).
Other aspects of the Fall also affected our work. The first is the tendency toward disownership. We talked in earlier chapters about the boundary problem of not taking responsibility for what is ours. This started in the garden when Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame on to another for their original act of sinning. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:11-13). They were disowning their responsibility and blaming another. Their theme was “Get the attention off of me.” This tendency to blame another is a key work problem.
The Fall also divided love from work. Before the Fall, Adam was connected to the love of God and from that loved state, he worked. After the Fall, he was not motivated out of perfect love, but he had to work as a part of the fallen world’s curse and the law. The love-motivated “want to” became a law-motivated “should.”
Paul tells us the law’s “should” increases our wish to rebel (Rom. 5:20); it makes us angry at what we “should” do (Rom. 4:15); and it arouses our motivations to do the wrong unable to take responsibility and work effectively by owning its behaviors, talents, and choices. No wonder we have work problems.
In this chapter, we want to look at how boundaries can help resolve many work-related problems, as well as how they can help you to be happier and more fulfilled at the work you do.
Work and Character Development
Christians often have a warped way of looking at work. Unless someone is working “in the ministry,” they see his work as secular. However, this view of work distorts the biblical picture. All of us—not only full-time ministers— have gifts and talents that we contribute to humanity. We all have a vocation, a “calling” into service. Wherever we work, whatever we do, we are to do “unto the Lord” (Col. 3:23).
Jesus used parables about work to teach us how to grow spiritually. These parables deal with money, with completing tasks, with faithful stewardship of a job, and with honest emotional dealings in work. They all teach character development in the context of relating to God and others. They teach a work ethic based on love under God.
Work is a spiritual activity. In our work, we are made in the image of God, who is himself a worker, a manager, a creator, a developer, a steward, and a healer. To be a Christian is to be a co-laborer with God in the community of humanity. By giving to others we find true fulfillment.
The New Testament teaches that jobs offer more than temporal fulfillment and rewards on earth. Work is the place to develop our character in preparation for the work that we will do forever. With that in mind, let’s look at how setting boundaries in the workplace can help us to grow spiritually.
Problems in the Workplace
A lack of boundaries creates problems in the workplace. In consulting for corporations, I have seen lack of boundaries as the major problem in many management squabbles. If people took responsibility for their own work and set clear limits, most of the problems for which I get consulted would not exist.
Let’s see how applying boundaries can solve some common problems in the workplace.
Problem #1: Getting Saddled with Another Person’s Responsibilities
Susie is an administrative assistant in a small company that plans training sessions for industry. She’s responsible for booking the training sessions and managing the speakers’ schedules. A co-worker. Jack, is responsible for the training facilities. He takes the materials to the site, sets up the equipment, and orders the food. Together, Susie and Jack make the events happen.
After a few months of really liking her work, Susie began to lose energy. Eventually, her friend and co-worker, Lynda, asked her what was wrong. Susie couldn’t put her finger on the problem at first. Then she realized: The problem was Jack!
Jack had been asking Susie to “pick this up for me while you’re out,” or “please bring this box of materials to the workshop.” Slowly, Jack was shifting his responsibilities onto Susie.
“You have to stop doing Jack’s work,” Lynda told Susie. “Just do your own work and don’t worry about him.”
“But what if things go wrong?” Susie asked.
Lynda shrugged. “Then they’ll blame Jack. It’s not your responsibility.”
“Jack will be angry with me for not helping,” Susie said.
“Let him,” said Lynda. “His anger can’t hurt you as much as his poor work habits can.”
So Susie began to set limits on Jack. She told him, “I will not have time to bring the materials for you this week.” And when Jack ran out of time to do things himself, Susie said, “I’m sorry that you have not done that before now, and I understand that you are in a bind. Maybe next time you will plan better. That’s not my job.”
Some trainers were angry that their equipment was not set up, and customers were angry that no food was provided for the break. But the boss tracked down the problem to the person who was responsible—Jack—and told him to shape up, or find another job. In the end, Susie began to like again, and Jack began to get more responsible. All because Susie set boundaries and stuck to them.
If you are being saddled with another person’s responsibilities and feel resentful, you need to take responsibility for your feelings, and realize that your unhappiness is not your co-worker’s fault, but your own. In this as in any other boundary conflict, you first must take responsibility for boundary conflict, yourself.
Then you must act responsibly to your co-worker. Go to your co-worker and explain your situation. When he asks you to do something that is not your responsibility, say no and refuse to do whatever it is that he wants you to do. If he angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and empathize with his anger. Don’t get angry back. To fight anger with anger is to get hooked into his game. Keep your emotional distance and say, “I am sorry if this upsets you. But that job is not my responsibility. I hope you get it! Worked out.”
If he continues to argue, tell him that you are finished discussing it; he can come and find you when he is ready to talk about something else. Do not fall into the trap of justifying why you can’t do his work for him. You will be slipping into his thinking that you should do his work if you are able to, and he will try to find a way that you can. You owe no one an explanation about why you will not do something: that is not your responsibility.
Many over-responsible people who work next to under-responsible people bear the consequences for their coworkers. Always covering for them, or bailing them out, they are not enjoying their work or their relationships with these people. Their lack of boundaries is hurting them, as well as keeping the other person from growing. If you are one of these people, you need to learn to set boundaries.
Sometimes, however, a co-worker will genuinely need some extra help. It is perfectly legitimate to bail out a responsible co-worker, or to make special concessions to a colleague who uses those concessions responsibly to get well. This is love, and good companies operate lovingly.
In our work as psychologists at the same hospital, we often cover hospital duty for each other or take each other’s on call” time. But if one of us started taking advantage of the other, we would need to stop that. Covering for the other at that point would not be helpful, but would enable a bad pattern.
Favors and sacrifices are part of the Christian life. Enabling is not. Learn to tell the difference by seeing if your giving is helping the other to become better or worse. The Bible requires responsible action out of the one who is given to. If you do not see it after a season, set limits (Luke 13:9).
Problem #2: Working Too Much Overtime
When I first went into practice, I hired a woman for twenty hours a week to run my office. On her second day in the office, I gave her a pile of things to do. About ten minutes later, she knocked at my door, stack of papers in hand.
“What can I do for you, Laurie?” I asked.
“You have a problem,” she told me.
“I do? What is it?” I asked, not having the vaguest idea what she was talking about.
“You hired me for twenty hours a week, and you have just given me about forty hours of work. Which twenty would you like done?”
She was right. I did have a problem. I had not managed my workload very well. I was either going to have to spend more on help, cut back on projects, or hire someone else. But she was right: it was my problem, not hers. I had to take responsibility for it and fix it. Laurie was telling me what that ever-present sign says: “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Many bosses aren’t so lucky. Their employees take responsibility for their lack of planning and never set limits on them. They are never forced to look at their lack of boundaries until it’s too late, until they have lost a good employee to exhaustion or burnout. Such bosses need clear limits, but many employees are afraid to set them, as Laurie did, because they need the job or they fear disapproval.
If you are in a situation in which you’re doing lots of extra work because you “need the job” and because you are afraid of being let go, you have a problem. If you are working more overtime than you want to, you are in bondage to your job. You are a slave, not an employee under contract. Clear and responsible contracts tell all parties involved what is expected of them, and they can be enforced. Jobs should have clear descriptions of duties and qualifications.
As hard as it sounds, you need to take responsibility for yourself and take steps to change your situation. Here are some suggested steps you may wish to take:
1. Set boundaries on your work. Decide how much overtime you are willing to do. Some overtime during seasonal crunches may be expected of you.
2. Review your job description, if one exists.
3. Make a list of the tasks you need to complete in the next month. Make a copy of the list and assign your own priority to each item. Indicate on this copy any tasks that are not part of your job description.
4. Make an appointment to see your boss to discuss your job overload. Together you should review the list of tasks need to complete in the next month. Have your boss prioritize the tasks. If your boss wants all the tasks done, and you cannot complete these tasks in the time you are willing to give, your boss may need to hire temporary help to complete those tasks. You may also wish to review your job description with your boss at this time if you think you are doing things that fall outside your domain.
If your boss still has unreasonable expectations of you, you may wish to take a co-worker or two along with you to a second meeting (according to the biblical model in Matthew 18), or you may wish to discuss your problem with the appropriate person in your personnel department. If even then he remains unreasonable about what he thinks you can accomplish, you may need to begin looking for other job opportunities within your company or outside.
You may need to go to night school and get some further training to open up other opportunities. You may need to chase down hundreds or employment ads and send out stacks of resumes. (Consult the book How to Get a Job by James Bramlett for information on job searches.) You may wish to start your own business. You may wish to start an emergency fund to survive between quitting your present Job and starting a new one.
Whatever you do, remember that your job overload is your responsibility and your problem. If your job is driving you crazy, you need to do something about it. Own the problem. Stop being a victim of an abusive situation and start setting some limits.
Problem #3: Misplaced Priorities
We have talked about setting limits on someone else. You also need to set limits on yourself. You need to realize how much time and energy you have, and manage your work accordingly. Know what you can do and when you can do it, and say no to everything else. Learn to know your limits and enforce them, as Laurie did. Say to your team or your boss, “If I am going to do A today, I will not be able to do B until Wednesday. Is that okay or do we need to rethink which one I need to be working on?”
Effective workers do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they spend their time on the most important things. Many people do excellent work but allow themselves to get sidetracked by unimportant things; they may do unimportant things very well! They feel like they are doing a great job, but their boss is upset because essential goals are not being met. Then they feel unappreciated and resentful because they have put out so much effort. They were working hard, but they weren’t placing boundaries on what they allowed to take up their time, and the really important things did not get their attention.
Say no to the unimportant, and say no to the inclination to do less than your best. If you are doing your best work on the most important things, you will reach your goals.
In addition to saying no to the unimportant, you need to make a plan to accomplish the important things, and erect some fences around your tasks. Realize your limits, and make sure you do not allow work to control your life. Having limits will force you to prioritize. If you make a commitment to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, you may say yes to everything. Say yes to the best, and sometimes you may need to say no to the good.
One man’s ministry required a lot of travel, so he and his wife put their heads together and decided that he would spend no more than one hundred nights a year on the road. When he gets an offer he has to check his time budget and see if this is something he wants to spend some of his nights on. This plan forces him to be more selective in his travel, thereby saving time for the rest of his life.
A company president who was allowing work to keep him away from home too much made a commitment to spend only forty hours a week in the office. At first, he really struggled because he wasn’t used to budgeting his time and commitments so closely. Slowly though, when he realized that he only had so much time, he began to spend it more wisely. He even got more accomplished because he was forced to work smarter.
Work will grow to fill the time you have set aside for it. If a meeting does not have an agenda with time limits, discussion could be endless. Allot time for certain things, and then keep your limits. You will work smarter and like your work more.
Take a lesson from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who, seeing Moses’ lack of boundaries, asked him why he was working so hard (Exod. 18:14-27).
“Because the people need me,” Moses said.
“What you are doing is not good,” Jethro replied. “You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone” (vv. 17-18). Even though Moses was doing good work, Jethro saw that he was going to burn himself out. Moses had allowed good work to go too far. Limits on good things keen them good.
Problem #4: Difficult Co-workers
A personnel counselor will often send someone to our hospital program because of stress at work. When these situations are unraveled, the “stress at work” often turns out to be somebody at the office who is driving the stressed-out person crazy. This person in the office or workplace has a strong influence over the emotional life of the person in pain, and he or she does not know how to deal with it.
In this case you need to remember the Law of Power: You only have the power to change yourself. Yow can’t change another person. You must see yourself as the problem, not the other person. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. Because you cannot change another person, you are out of control. The real problem lies in how you are relating to the problem person. You are the one in pain, and only you have the power to fix it.
Many people have found immense relief in the thought that they have no control over another person and that they must focus on changing their reactions to that person. They must refuse to allow that person to affect them. This idea is life changing, the beginning of true self-control.
Problem #5: Critical Attitudes
Stress is often caused by working with or for someone who is supercritical. People will get hooked into either trying to win over the critical person, which can almost never be done, or by allowing the person to provoke them to anger. Some people internalize the criticism and get down on themselves. All of these reactions indicate an inability to stand apart from the critical person and keep one’s boundaries.
Allow these critical people to be who they are, but keep yourself separate from them and do not internalize their opinion of you. Make sure you have a more accurate appraisal of yourself, and then disagree internally.
You may also want to confront the overly critical person according to the biblical model (Matt. 18). At first tell her how you feel about her attitude and the way it affects you. If she is wise, she will listen to you. If not, and her attitude is disruptive to others as well, two or more of you might want to talk to her. If she will not agree to change, you may want to tell her that you do not wish to talk with her until she gets her attitude under control.
Or you can follow the company’s grievance policy. The important thing to remember is that you can’t control her, but you can choose to limit your exposure to her, either physically or emotionally distancing yourself from her. This is self-control.
Avoid trying to gain the approval of this sort of person. It will never work, and you will only feel controlled. And avoid getting in arguments and discussions. You will never win. Remember the proverb, “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you” (Prov. 9:7-8). If you allow them to draw thinking that you will change them, you are asking them for trouble. Stay separate. Keep your boundaries. Don’t get sucked into their game.
Problem #6: Conflicts with Authority
If you are having trouble getting along with your boss, you may be having “transference feelings.” Transference is when you experience feelings in the present that really belong to some unfinished business in the past.
Transference happens frequently with bosses because they are authority figures. The boss-employee relationship can trigger authority conflicts you might have. You can begin to have strong reactions that are not appropriate to the current relationship.
Suppose your supervisor tells you that he wants something done differently. Immediately you feel “put down.” You think, He never thinks I do anything right. I’ll show him. Your supervisor may have made the comment in passing, but the feelings it triggered were very strong indeed. The reality is that the interaction may be tapping into unresolved hurt from past authority relationships, such as parents or teachers.
When a transference relationship starts, you may begin to act out all the old patterns you did with parents. This never works. You become a child on the job.
To have boundaries is to take responsibility for your transference. If you find yourself having strong reactions to someone, take some time and look inside to see if the feelings are familiar. Do they remind you of someone from the past? Did Mom or Dad treat you like that? Do they have the same personality as this person?
You are responsible for working out these feelings. Until you face your own feelings, you can’t even see who others really are. You are looking at them through your own distortions, through your own unfinished business. When you see others clearly without transference, you will know how to deal with them.
Another example would be strong feelings of competition with a co-worker. This may represent some competitive relationship from the past, such as sibling rivalry, that has not been worked through. Whenever you experience strong feelings, see them as part of your responsibility. This will lead you to any unfinished business and healing, as well as keep you from acting irrationally toward co-workers and bosses. Leave the past in the past, deal with it, and do not allow it to interfere with present relationships.
Problem #7: Expecting Too Much of Work
People increasingly come to the workplace wanting the company be a “family.” In a society where the family, church, and community are not the support structures they once were, people look to their colleagues for the emotional support a family once provided. This lack of boundaries between the personal and work life is fraught with all sorts difficulties.
The workplace ideally should be supportive, safe, and nurturing. But this atmosphere should primarily support the employee in work-related ways—to help her learn, improve, and get a job done. The problem arises when someone wants the job to provide what he the job to provide what her parents did not provide for her: primary nurturing, relationship, self-esteem, and approval. Work is not set up this way, nor is it what the typical job asks of someone. The inherent conflict in this set-up is this: The job expects adult functioning, and the person wants childhood needs met. These differing expectations will inevitably collide.
Health comes from owning unmet childhood needs and working them out. The problem is that the workplace is not the place to do that. There are expectations at work. They will ask from you without giving because they are going to pay you for your work. They are not obligated to provide all the emotional support you need.
You need to make sure you are meeting your needs for support and emotional repair outside of work. Plug into supportive and healing networks that will help you to grow out of your emotional hurts and unmet needs, and build you up so you can function well at the job, in the adult world that has adult expectations. Get your relationship needs met outside of work, and then you will be able to work the best without getting your needs mixed up with what the company needs from you. Keep your boundaries firm; protect those hurt places from the workplace, which is not only not set up to heal, but also may wound unintentionally.
Problem #8: Taking Work-Related Stress Home
Just as we should keep good boundaries on our personal issues and keep them out of the workplace, we need to keep some boundaries on work and keep it out of the home. This generally has two components.
The first is emotional. Conflicts at work need to be dealt with and worked through so they do not begin to affect the rest of your life. If denied, they can cause major depressions and other illnesses that begin to spill over into other areas of life.
Make sure you understand work issues and face them directly so that work does not emotionally control your life. Find out why a certain co-worker is able to get to you, or why your boss is able to control the rest of your life. Find out why your successes or failures on the job are able to bring you up or down. These important character issues need to be worked through. Otherwise, the job will own you.
The second component is finite things such as time, energy, and other resources. Make sure that the job, which is literally never done, does not continue to spill over into personal life and cost you relationships and other things that matter. Put limits on special projects that are going to take more time than usual, and make sure overtime does not become a pattern. One company we know has such a high value for family that they dock people for working overtime! They want them to put limits on their work and be home with the family. Find out your own limits and live by them. These are good boundaries.
Problem #9; Disliking Your Job
Boundaries are where our identity comes from. Boundaries define what is me and what is not me. Our work is part of our identity in that it taps into our particular giftedness and the exercise of those gifts in the community.
However, many people are unable to ever find a true work identity. They stumble from job to job, never really finding anything that is “them.” More often than not, this is a boundary problem. They have not been able to own their own gifts, talents, wants, desires, and dreams because they are unable to set boundaries on others’ definitions and expectations of them.
This happens with people who have not separated from church and the family they grew up in. A pastor was having great difficulty with his church and the board of elders. Finally, right in the middle of a consistory meeting, he said, “I never wanted to be a pastor anyway. It was my mother’s wish, not mine.” He did not have good enough boundaries with his mother to define his own career path. As a result, he had fused with her wishes and was miserable. His heart had not been in it from the start.
This can happen also with friends and culture. Others’ expectations can be very strong influences. You must make sure that your boundaries are strong enough that you do not let others define you. Instead, work with God to find out who you really are and what kind of work you are made for. Romans 12:2 speaks of having boundaries against these kinds of pressures from others: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” You should have a realistic expectation of yourself based on who you really are, your own true self with your own particular giftedness. You can only do this with boundaries that stand up and say, “This is me, and that is not me.’ Stand up against others’ expectations of you.
Finding Your Life’s Work
Finding your life’s work involves taking risks. First you need to firmly establish your identity, separating yourself from those you are attached to and following your desires. You must take ownership of how you feel, how you think, and what you want. You must assess your talents and limitations. And then you must begin to step out as God leads you.
For God wants you to discover and use your gifts to his glory. He asks only that you include him in the process: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this” (Ps. 37:4-5).
God also, however, calls you to be accountable for what you do: “Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment” (Eccl. 11:9).
As you develop your talents, look at your work as a partnership between you and God. He has given you gifts, and he wants you to develop them. Commit your way to the Lord, and you will find your work identity. Ask him to help.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Boundaries and Your Children
Shannon couldn’t stop crying. A young mother of two preschool children, she couldn’t imagine herself being angry, out of control, and certainly not abusive. Yet a week ago, she had picked up three-year—old Robby and shaken him. Hard. She had screamed at him. Loudly. And it wasn’t the first time, She had done it numerous times in the past year. The only difference was that this time, Shannon almost physically injured her son. She was frightened.
The experience had so shaken Shannon and her husband, Gerald that they called and made an appointment with me to discuss what had happened. Her shame and guilt were intense. She avoided eye contact with me as she told her story.
The several hours before Shannon had lost control with Robby had been horrible. Gerald and she had had an argument over breakfast. He had left for work without saying good-bye. Then one-year-old Tanya spilled cereal all over the floor. And Robby chose that morning to do everything he’d been told not to for the past three years. He pulled the cat’s tail. He figured out how to open the front door, and he ran outside into the yard and into the street. He smeared Shannon’s lipstick all over the white dining room wall, and he pushed Tanya to the floor
This last incident was the straw that broke Shannon’s back. Seeing Tanya lying on the floor, crying, with Robby standing over her with a defiantly pleased look, was too much. Shannon saw red and impulsively ran to her son. You know the rest of the story.
After she had calmed down a little, I asked Shannon how she and Gerald normally disciplined Robby.
“Well, we don’t want to alienate Robby, or quench his spirit,” Gerald began. “Being negative is so … so … negative. So we try to reason with him. Sometimes we’ll warn him that ‘you won’t get ice cream tonight.’ Sometimes we try to praise good things he does. And sometimes we try to ignore the bad behavior. Then maybe he’ll stop it.”
“Doesn’t he push the limits?”
Both parents nodded. “You wouldn’t believe it,” Shannon said. “It’s like he doesn’t hear us. He keeps on doing what he jolly well pleases. And generally, he’ll keep it up until one of us explodes and yells at him. I guess we just have a problem child.”
“Well, there’s certainly a problem, I replied. “But perhaps Robby has been trained to not respond to anything but out-of-control rage. Let’s talk about boundaries and kids….”
Of all the areas in which boundaries are crucially important, none is more relevant than that of raising children. How we approach boundaries and child rearing will have enormous impact on the characters of our kids. On how they develop values. On how well they do in school. On the friends they pick. On whom they marry. And on how well they do in a career.
The Importance of Family
God, at his deepest level, is a lover (1 John 4:8). He is relationally oriented and relationally driven. He desires connection with us from womb to tomb: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). God’s loving nature isn’t passive. It’s active. Love multiplies itself. God the relational Lover is also God the aggressive Creator. He wants to fill up his universe with beings who care for him— and for each other.
The family is the social unit God invented to fill up the world with representatives of his loving character. It’s a place for nurturing and developing babies until they’re mature enough to go out of the family as adults and to multiply his image in other surroundings.
God first picked the nation Israel to be his children. After centuries of resistance by Israel, however, God chose the church: “Because of [Israel’s] transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious” (Rom. 11:11). The body of Christ has the same role as Israel had—to multiply God’s love and character.
The church is often described as a family. We are to do good “especially to those who belong to the family of believers (Gal. 6:10). Believers “are members of God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). We are to “know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household” (1 Tim. 3:15).
These and many other powerful passages show us how God “thinks family.” He explains his heart as a parent would. He’s a daddy. He likes his job. This biblical portrayal of God helps show us how parenting is such a vital part of bringing God’s own character to this planet in our own little ones.
Boundaries and Responsibility
God, the good parent, wants to help us, his children, grow up. He wants to see us “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Part of this maturing process is helping us know how to take responsibility for our lives.
It’s the same with our own flesh-and-blood kids. Second only to learning how to bond, to form strong attachments, the most important thing parents can give children is a sense of responsibility —knowing what they are responsible for and knowing what they aren’t responsible for, knowing how to say no and knowing how to accept no. Responsibility is a gift of enormous value.
We’ve all been around middle-aged people who have the boundaries of an eighteen-month-old. They have tantrums or sulk when others set limits on them, or they simply fold and comply with others just to keep the peace. Remember that these adult people started off as little people. They learned long, long ago to either fear or hate boundaries. The relearning process for adults is laborious.
Instilling vs. Repairing Boundaries
A wise mother of adult children once watched her younger friend struggle with her youngster. The child was refusing to behave, and the young mother was quickly losing her mind. Affirming the mother’s decision to make the child sit on a chair by himself, the older woman said, “Do it now, Dear. Discipline the child now—and you just might survive adolescence.
Developing boundaries in young children is that proverbial ounce of prevention. If we teach responsibility, limit setting, and delay of gratification early on, the smoother our children’s later years of life will be. The later we start, the harder we and they have to work.
If you’re a parent of older children, don’t lose heart. It just means boundary development will be met with more resistance. In their minds, they do not have a lot to gain by learning boundaries. You’ll need to spend more time working on it, getting more support from friends—and praying harder! We’ll review age- appropriate boundary tasks for the different stages of childhood later in this chapter.
Boundary Development in Children
The work of boundary development in children is the work of learning responsibility. As we teach them the merits and limits of responsibility, we teach them autonomy—we prepare them to take on the tasks of adulthood.
The Scriptures have much to say about the role of boundary setting in child rearing. Usually, we call it discipline. The Hebrew and Greek words that scholars translate as “discipline” mean “teaching.” This teaching has both a positive and a negative slant.
The positive facets of discipline are proactivity, prevention, and instruction. Positive discipline is sitting someone down to educate and train him in a task: fathers are to raise children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The negative facets of discipline are correction, chasetisement, and consequences. Negative discipline is letting children suffer the results of their actions to learn a lesson in responsibility: “Stern discipline awaits him who leaves the path” (Prov. 15:10).
Good child rearing involves both preventive training and practice, and correctional consequences. For example, you set a ten o’clock bedtime for your fourteen-year-old. “It’s there so that you’ll get enough sleep to be alert in school, you tell her. You’ve just disciplined positively. Then your teen dawdles until 11:30 P.M. The next day you say, “Because you did not get to bed on time last night, you may not use the phone today.” You’ve just disciplined negatively.
Why are both the carrot and the whip necessary in good boundary development? Because God uses practice—trial and error—to help us grow up. We learn maturity by getting information, applying it poorly, making mistakes, learning from our mistakes, and doing better the next time.
Practice is necessary in all areas of life: in learning to ski, write an essay, or operate a computer. We need practice in developing a deep love relationship and in learning to study the Bible. And it’s just as true in our spiritual and emotional growth: “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Heb.5:14). Practice is important in learning boundaries and responsibility. Our mistakes are our teachers.
Discipline is an external boundary, designed to develop internal boundaries in our children. It provides a structure of safety until the child has enough structure in his character to not need it. Good discipline always moves the child toward more internal structure and more responsibility.
We need to distinguish between discipline and punishment. Punishment is payment for wrongdoing. Legally, it’s paying a penalty for breaking the law. Punishment doesn’t leave a lot of room for practice, however. It’s not a great teacher. The price is too high: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). Punishment does not leave much room for mistakes.
Discipline, however, is different. Discipline is not payment for a wrong. It’s the natural law of God: our actions reap consequences.
Discipline is different from punishment because God is finished punishing us. Punishment ended on the cross for all those who accept Christ as Savior: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Christ’s suffering paid for our wrongdoing.
In addition, discipline and punishment have a different relationship to time. Punishment looks back. It focuses on making payment for wrongs one in the past. Christ’s suffering was payment, for example, for our sin. Discipline, however, looks forward. The lessons we learn from discipline help us to not make the same mistakes again: God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness”(Heb.12: 10).
How does that help us? It frees us to make mistakes without fear of judgment, without fear of loss of relationship: “Therefore, there is now not condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). The freedom of the cross allows us to practice without having to pay a terrible price. The only danger is consequences — not isolation and judgment.
Take, for example, the mother who tells her ten-year-old, “You smart off again, and I won’t love you anymore. The youngster is immediately in a no-win situation. She can either rebel and lose her most important relationship in life, or she can comply and become externally obedient, losing any chance of practicing confrontational skills. Now, compare that response with this, I’ll never stop loving you. That’s a constant in my heart. However, if you smart off again you’ve lost your boom box for three days.” The relationship is still intact. There’s no condemnation. And the child gets an opportunity to choose responsibility or suffer consequences—with no risk of loosing love and safety. This is the way to maturity, to learning to eat solid food: the safe practice of discipline.
The Boundary Needs of Children
What specific needs do boundaries meet in our kids? Limit-setting abilities have several important jobs that will pay enormous dividends throughout life.
Self-Protection
Have you ever seen anything more helpless than the human infant? Human babies are less able to take care of themselves than animal babies. God designed the newborn months as a means for the mother and father (or another caregiver) to connect deeply with their infant, knowing that without their minute-by-minute care, the baby would not survive. All this time and energy translates into an enduring attachment, in which the child learns to feel safe in the world.
God’s program of maturation, however, doesn’t stop there. Mom and Dad can’t always be there to care and provide. The task of protection needs to ultimately pass on to the children. When they grow up, they need to protect themselves.
Boundaries are our way of protecting and safeguarding our souls. Boundaries are designed to keep the good in and the bad out. And skills such as saying no, telling the truth, and maintaining physical distance need to be developed in the family structure to allow the child to take on the responsibility of self-protection.
Consider the following two twelve-year-old boys:
Jimmy is talking with his parents at the dinner table. “Guess what —some kids wanted me to smoke pot with them. When I told them I didn’t want to, they said I was a sissy. I told them they were dumb. I like some of them, but if they can’t like me because I don’t smoke pot, I guess they aren’t really my friends.”
Paul comes home after school with red eyes, slurred speech, and coordination difficulties. When asked by his concerned parents what is wrong, he denies everything until, finally, he blurts out, “Everybody’s doing it. Why do you hate my friends?”
Both Jimmy and Paul come from Christian homes with lots of love and an adherence to biblical values. Why did they turn out so differently? Jimmy’s family allowed disagreements between parent and child and gave him practice in the skill of boundary setting, even with them. Jimmy’s mom would be holding and hugging her two-year-old when he would get fidgety. He’d say, “Down,” meaning, “Let me get a little breathing space, Ma.” Fighting her own impulses to hold on to her child, she would set him down on the floor and say, “Wanna play with your trucks?”
Jimmy’s dad used the Salute philosophy. When wrestling with his Son on the floor, he tried to pay attention to Jimmy’s limits. When the going got too rough, or when jimmy was tired, he could say, “Stop, Daddy,” and Dad would get up. They’d go to another game.
Jimmy’ was receiving boundary training, He was learning that when he was scared, in discomfort, or wanted to change things, he could say no. This is little word gave him a sense of power in his life. It took him out of a helpless or compliant position. And Jimmy could say it without receiving an angry and hurt response, or a manipulative countermove, such as. “But Jimmy, Mommy needs to hold you now, okay?”
Jimmy learned from infancy on that his boundaries were good and that he could use them to protect himself. He learned to resist things that weren’t good for him.
A hallmark of Jimmy’s family was permission to disagree. When, for example, Jimmy would fight his parents about his bedtime, they never withdrew or punished him for disagreeing. Instead, they would listen to his reasoning, and. if it seemed appropriate, they would change their minds. If not, they would maintain their boundaries.
Jimmy was also given a vote in some family matters. When family night out would come up, his parents listened to his opinion on whether they should go to a movie, play board games, or play basketball. Was this a family with no limits? On the contrary! It was a family who took boundary setting seriously—as a skill to develop in its children.
This was good practice for resisting in the evil day (Eph. 5:16), when some of Jimmy’s friends turned on him and pressured him to take drugs. How was Jimmy able to refuse? Because by then, he’d had ten or eleven years of practice disagreeing with people who were important to him without losing their love. He didn’t fear abandonment in standing up against his friends. He’d done it many times successfully with his family with no loss of love.
Paul, on the other hand, came from a different family setting. In his home, no had two different responses. His mom would be hurt and withdraw and pout. She would send guilt messages, such as “How can you say no to your mom who loves you?” His dad would get angry, threaten him, and say things like, “Don’t talk back to me, Mister.”
It didn’t take long for Paul to learn that to have his way, he had to be externally compliant. He developed a strong yes on the outside, seeming to agree with his Family’s values and control. Whatever he thought about a subject—the dinner menu, TV restrictions, church choices, clothes, or curfews— he stuffed inside.
Once, when he had tried to resist his mother’s hug, she had immediately withdrawn from him, pushing him away with the words. “Someday you’ll feel sorry for hurting your mother’s feelings like that.” Day by Day, Paul was being trained to not set limits.
As a result of his learned boundarylessness, Paul seemed to be a content, respectful son. The teens, however, are a crucible for kids. We find out what kind of character has actually been built into our children during this difficult passage.
Paul Folded. He gave in to his friends’ pressure. Is it any wonder that the first people he said no to were his parents— at twelve years old? Resentment and the years of not having boundaries were beginning to erode the compliant, easy-to-live-with false self he’d developed to survive.
Taking Responsibility for One’s Needs
The group therapy session I was leading was quiet. I’d just asked Janice an unanswerable question. The question was, “What do you need? She looked confused, became thoughtful, and sat back in her chair.
Janice had just described a week of painful loss: her husband had made moves to separate, her kids were out of control, and her job was in jeopardy. The concern on the faces of the group members, who were all working on issues of attachment and safety, was evident. Yet no one knew quite how to help. So when I asked the question, I was asking it for all of us. But Janice couldn’t answer.
This was typical of Janice’s background. She’d spent most of her childhood taking responsibility for her parents’ feelings. The peacemaker of the house, she was always smoothing over the ruffled feathers of either parent, with soothing words like, “Mom, I’m sure Dad didn’t mean to blow up at you—he’s had a rough day.”
The result of such unbiblical responsibility toward her family was clear in Janice’s life: a sense of over responsibility for others and a lack of attunement toward her own needs. Janice had radar out for the hurts of others; but the radar pointed her way was broken. It was no wonder she couldn’t answer my question. Janice didn’t understand her own God given, legitimate needs. She had no vocabulary for this thinking.
The story doles, however, have a happy ending. One of the group members said, “If I were in your shoes, I know what I’d need. I’d really need to know that you people in this room cared for me, that you didn’t see me as a colossal, shameful failure, and that you’d pray for me and let me call you on the phone this week for support.
Janice’s eyes began watering. Something about her fiend’s empathic statement touched her in a place she couldn’t herself touch. And she allowed the comfort that comes from others who have been comforted to take its place inside her (2 Cor. 1:4).
Janice’s story illustrates the second fruit of boundary development in our children: the ability to take ownership of, or responsibility for, our own needs. God intends for us to know when we’re hungry, lonely, in trouble, overwhelmed, or in need of a break—and then to take initiative to get what we need. The Scriptures present Jesus as understanding this point when he left a crowd of people in a boat in a time of great ministry and need: “because so many people were coming and going that [he and his disciples] did not even have a chance to eat” (Mark 6:31).
Boundaries play a primary role in this process. Our limits create a spiritual and emotional space, a separateness, between ourselves and others. This allows our needs to be heard and understood. Without a solid sense of boundaries, it becomes difficult to filter out our needs from those of others. There is too much static in the relationship.
When children can be taught to experience their own needs, as opposed to those of others, they have been given a genuine advantage in life. They are able to better avoid the burnout that comes from not taking care of one’s self.
How can we help tour children experience their own individual needs? The best thing a parent can do is too encourage verbal expression of those needs, even when they don’t “go with the family flow.” When children have permission to ask for something that goes against the grain— even though they might not receive it—they develop a sense of what they need.
Below are some ways you can help your children:
• Allow them to talk about their anger.
• Allow them to express grief, loss, or sadness without trying to cheer them up and talk them out of their feelings.
• Encourage then too ask questions and not assume your words are the equivalent of Scripture (this takes a pretty secure parent!).
• Ask them what they are feeling when they seen isolated or distressed; help them put words to their negative feelings. Do not try to keep things light for a false sense of cooperation and family closeness.
The first aspect of taking ownership over one’s needs, then, is too identify them. That’s where our spiritual radar comes in. Janice’s radar was broken amid undeveloped, and she wasn’t able to identify her needs.
The second aspect of taking ownership is to initiate responsible caretaking for ourselves—as opposed to placing the burden on someone else. We must allow our children to experience the painful consequences of their own irresponsibility and mistakes. This is the “training” of Hebrews 5:14 and the “discipline” of Hebrews 12. By the time they are ready to leave home, our children should have internalized a deep sense of personal responsibility for their lives. They should hold these convictions:
• My success or failure in life largely depends on me.
• Though I am to look to God and others for comfort and instruction, I alone am responsible for my choices.
• Though I am deeply affected by my significant relationships throughout my life, I can’t blame my problems on anyone but myself.
• Though I will always will fail and need support, I can’t depend on some over responsible individual to constantly bail me out of spiritual, emotional, financial, or relational crises.
This sense of “my life is up to me” is founded in God’s concern that we take responsibility for our lives. He wants us to use our talents in productive ways, as Jesus discussed in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30). And this sense of responsibility will follow us all through our adult lives—and even beyond the grave, at the judgment seat of Christ.
You can imagine how well not taking ownership over our lives will come across to the Lord then: “But I had a dysfunctional family.” “But I was lonely.” “But I didn’t have much energy.” The rationalizing “but” will have as much impact as the excuses of the servant in the parable of the talents did. This isn’t to say that we aren’t deeply influenced for better or worse by our backgrounds and our various stressors. We certainly are. But we are ultimately responsible for what we do with our injured, immature souls.
Wise parents allow their children to undergo “safe suffering.” “Safe suffering” means allowing a child to experience age-appropriate consequences. Allowing a six-year-old to go outside after dark isn’t training her for adulthood. She is making decision that she doesn’t have the maturity to make. She shouldn’t be placed in a position of making these choices in the first plane.
Pat’s parents allowed their daughter to experience safe suffering. At the start of senior high, they gave Pat an entire semester’s allowance. Pat was responsible for paying for her school meals, clothing, social outings, and extracurricular activities. The amount was enough for this and a little more. On the surface it looked like a teenager’s dream—all this money and no restrictions on how she spent it!
The first semester Pat bought some beautiful outfits. She went out to lots of functions with her friends. And she even treated them several times. That lasted for about one month out of the three and a half. The next two and a half months were lean ones. Pat stayed home a lot, saving her remaining money for school lunches, and she wore her new outfits over and over again.
The next semester was better—and by the beginning of her sophomore year, she had established a bank account and a workable budget. Pat was developing boundaries. Normally a budding shopping addict, she began saying no to clothes, CD’s, food, and magazines that normally would have been a minimum requirement for her. She began learning to take responsibility for her own life. And she didn’t end up like many college graduates who, after years of having someone else bail them out, can’t cook, clean, or keep a checkbook balanced.
It’s important to tie consequences as closely to the actions of the child as possible. This best replicates real life.
Homework projects are another area in which parents can either help the child take on responsibility—or create the illusion of the eternal, omnipresent parent who will always take up the slack. It’s difficult when your child comes to you tearfully, saying, “I have a ten-page report clue tomorrow— and I just started.” Our impulse, as loving parents, is to bail them out by doing the research, nor the organization, or the typing. Or all three.
Why do we do this? Because we love our kids. We long for the best for them just as God longs for the best for us. And yet, just as God allows us too experience our failures, we may need to let our kids mar a good report card with a bad grade. This is often the consequence of not planning ahead.
Having a Sense of Control and Choice
“I won’t go to the dentist—and you can’t make me go!” Pamela stamped her eleven-year-old feet and scowled at her father, Sal, who was waiting at the front door.
There had been a time when Sal would have reacted in a knee-jerk fashion to Pamela’s power move. He would have said something like, “Well, we’ll see about that!” and physically dragged the screaming child into the car.
However, lots not family no counseling and reading up on these issues had prepared Sal for the inevitable. Calmly he said to her, “You’re absolutely right, Honey. I can’t make you go to the dentist. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. But remember our rule: if you choose not to go, you’re also choosing not to go to the party tomorrow night. I’ll certainly respect either decision. Shall I cancel your appointment?’
Pamela looked perplexed and thought a minute. Then, slowly, she replied, “I’ll go. But I’m not going because I have to.” Pamela was right. She was choosing to go to her appointment because she wanted to attend the party.
Children need to have a sense of control and choice in their lives. They need to see themselves not as the dependent, helpless pawns of parents, but as choosing, willing, initiative-taking agents of their own lives.
Children begin life in a helpless, dependent fashion. Godly parenting, however, seeks to help children learn to think, make decisions, and master their environment in all aspects of life. This runs the gamut of deciding what too wear in the morning to what courses to take in school. Learning to make age-appropriate decisions helps children have a sense of security and control in their lives.
Anxious and well—meaning parents attempt too prevent their children from making painful decisions. They shield them from fouling up and skinning their knees. Their motto is, “Here, let me decide that for you.” The result is that kids become atrophied in a very important part of the image of God that should be developing in their character: their assertion, or change-making abilities. Children need a sense that their lives, their destinies are largely theirs to determine, within the province of God’s sovereignty. This helps them weigh choices, rather than avoid them. They learn to appreciate the consequences of choices made, rather than resenting the choices made for them.
Delaying Gratification of Goals
The word now was made for young children. It’s where they live. Try telling a two-year-old she can have dessert tomorrow. She doesn’t buy it. That means “never” to her. Newborns, in fact, don’t have the capacity to understand “later.” That’s why a six-month-old panics when Mom leaves the room. He is convinced that she is irrevocably gone forever.
Yet, sometime in our development we learn the value of “later,” of delaying one good for a greater good. We call this skill delay of gratification. It’s the ability to say no to our impulses, wishes, and desires for some gain down the road.
The Scriptures place great value on this ability. God uses this skill too help us see the benefits of planning and preparing. Jesus is our prime example. “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).
Generally, this skill isn’t relevant until after the first year of life, as bonding needs take precedence during that time. However, teaching delay of gratification can begin quickly boy the beginning of the Second year. Dessert comes after carrots, not before.
Older children also need to learn this skill. The family can’t buy certain clothes or recreational items until later in the year. Again, the boundaries developed during this process are invaluable later in life. They can prevent a child from becoming an adult who is a broken, chaotic, impulse-driven slave too Madison Avenue. Our children can become like ants, who are self-sufficient, instead of sluggards, who are always in crisis (Prov. 6:6-11).
Learning how too delay gratification helps children have a goal orientation. They learn to save time and money for things that are important too them, and they value what they have chosen to buy. One family I know had the son save up his money for his first car. He began with a plan, with Dad’s help, when he was thirteen. When all his weekend amid summer jobs finally paid off in a car when he was sixteen, he treated that car like it was fine china—you could eat lunch off the hood. He had counted the cost, and valued the result (Luke 14:28).
Respecting the Limits of Others
From an early age, children need to be able to accept the limits of parents, siblings, and friends. They need to know that others don’t always want to play with them, that others may not want to watch the same TV shows they want, and that others may want to eat dinner at a different restaurant than they do. They need to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them.
This is important for a couple of reasons. First, the ability to learn to accept limits teaches us to take responsibility for ourselves. Knowing that others are not always available for us, at our beck and call, helps us too become inwardly directed instead of externally driven. It helps us carry our own knapsack.
Have you ever been around a child who can’t hear no, who keeps whining, cajoling, throwing a tantrum, or pouting till he gets his way? The problem is, the longer we hate and resist the limits of others, the more dependent we will be on others. We expect others to take care of us, rather than simply taking care of ourselves.
At any rate, God has constructed life itself to teach us this law. It’s the only way we can live on this planet together. Sooner on later, someone will say a no to us that we can’t ignore. It’s built into the fabric of life. Observe the progression of nos in the life of the person who resists others’ limits:
1. the no of parents
2. the no of siblings
3. the no of schoolteachers
4. the no of school friends
5. the no of bosses and supervisors
6. the no of spouses
7. the no of health problems from overeating, alcoholism, or an irresponsible lifestyle
8. the no of police, the courts, ana even prison
Some people learn to accept boundaries early in life, even as early as stage number one. But some people have to go all the way to number eight before they get the picture that we have to accept life’s limits: “Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge” (Prov. 19:27). Many out-of-control adolescents don’t mature until their thirties, when they become tired of not having a steady job and a place to stay. They have to hit bottom financially, and sometimes they may even have to live on the streets for a while. In time, they begin sticking with a career, saving money, and starting to grow up. They gradually begin to accept life’s limits.
No matter how tough we think we are, there’s always someone tougher. If we don’t teach our children to take a no, someone who loves them far less may take on the job. Someone tougher. Someone stronger .And most parents would much rather spare having their children go through this suffering. The earlier we teach limits, the better.
A second, even more important, reason why accepting the limits of others is important for kids is this: Heeding others’ boundaries helps children to love. At its heart, the idea of respecting others’ boundaries is the basis for empathy, or loving others as we’d like to be loved. Children need to be given the grace of having their no respected, and they need to learn to give that same grace to others. As they feel empathy for the needs of others, they mature and deepen in their love for God and others. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Say, for example, that your six-year-old accidentally but carelessly bonks you on the head hard with a softball. To ignore it, or act like it didn’t hurt, is to give the child the feeling that his actions have no impact. He can then avoid any sense of responsibility or awareness of others’ needs or hurts. However, telling him, I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but that ball really hurt me—try to be a little more careful” helps him see, without condemnation, that he can hurt people he loves and that his actions do matter.
If this principle isn’t taught, it’s difficult for children to grow up as loving people. Frequently, they become self-centered or controlling. At that point, God’s program of maturity is more difficult. A client of mine had been trained by his family to ignore others’ limits. His subsequent manipulation had landed him in jail for stealing. Yet this process, painful though it was, taught him empathy.
“I really never knew that other people had needs and hurts,” he once explained to me. “I was raised to concentrate on Number One. And when I began getting confronted on my lack of respect for others’ needs, something happened inside. A space opened up inside my heart for others. I didn’t ignore my own needs—but for the first time, I saw progress. I actually started feeling guilty about how my actions have hurt my wife and family.”
Did he have a long way to go? Absolutely. But he was on the right road. Learning boundaries later in life was a start to becoming an authentically, biblically loving person.
Seasonal Boundaries: Age-Appropriate Limits Training
If this was the first chapter you turned to when you glanced over the table of contents, chances are you’re a parent. Chances are also that you may be experiencing boundary difficulties with your children. Perhaps you’re reading this simply in an effort to prevent problems. But more likely you’re in some pain from which you need relief: Your newborn won’t stop shrieking. Your toddler runs the household. Your elementary school student has behavioral problems at school. Your junior high kid smarts off. Your high schooler is drinking.
All of these issues indicate possible boundary problems. And this section provides an outline on the age—appropriate boundary tasks your children should be learning. As parents, we need to take into consideration our children’s developmental needs and abilities to avoid asking them to do something they can’t do, or to avoid asking to little of them.
Below are the basic tasks for the different stages of childhood. For more detailed information on birth to age three, refer to chapter 4 on how boundaries are developed in childhood.
Birth to Five Months
At this stage, the newborn needs too establish an attachment with Mother, Dad, or the primary caregiver. A sense of belonging, of being safe and welcome are the tasks the child needs to accomplish. Setting limits is not as much an issue here as providing security for the infant.
The only real boundary here is the soothing presence of the mother. She protects the infant. Mom’s job is to help her newborn contain intense, frightening, and conflicting feelings. Left by themselves, infants are terrorized by their aloneness and lack of internal structure.
For centuries mothers—including Mary, Jesus’ mother— have swaddled their babies, or wrapped cloths tightly around them. While swaddling keeps the baby’s body heat regulated, the tight wrappings also help the infant feel safe— a sort of external boundary. The baby knows where he or she begins and ends. When newborns are undressed, they often panic about the loss of structure around them.
Some well-meaning Christian teachers call for infant training theories that schedule the feeding and holding of infants. These techniques try to teach an infant not to cry or demand comfort because “the child is in control instead of the parent,” or because “that demand is evidence of the child’s selfish, sinful nature.” These theories can be horribly destructive when not understood biblically on developmentally.
The screaming four-month-old child is trying to find out whether the world is a reasonably safe place or not. She is in a state of deep terror and isolation. She hasn’t learned too feel comfort when no one is around. To put her on the parents’ schedule instead of her own for holding and feeding is to “condemn the innocent,” as Jesus said (Matt. 12:7).
These teachers say their programs are biblical because they work. “When I stopped picking her up from her crib at night, my four-month-old stopped crying,” they’ll say. That may be true. But another explanation for the cessation of crying is infant depression, a condition in which the child gives up hope and withdraws. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12).
Teaching delay of gratification shouldn’t begin until after the first year of life, when a foundation of safety has been established between baby and mother. Just as grace always precedes truth (John 1:17), attachment must come before separation.
Five to Ten Months
As we learned in Chapter 4, children in the last half of the first year of life are in the “hatching” phase. They are learning that “Mother and I aren’t the same. There’s a scary, fascinating world out there that babies literally crawl toward. Though they have tremendous dependency needs, infants are beginning to move out of their oneness with their mom.
To help their children develop good boundaries during this stage, parents need to encourage attempts at separateness, while still being the anchors the child clings to. Allow your child to be fascinated with people and objects other than you. Make your home a safe place for your baby to explore.
Helping your children hatch, however, doesn’t mean neglecting the deep attachment necessary for their internal foundation, their rootedness and groundedness. This is still an infant’s primary work. You need to carefully tend to your child’s needs for bonding and emotional safety, while at the same time allowing the child to look outward, beyond you.
Many mothers find this transition from their child’s love affair with them to the big wide world difficult. The loss of such a deep intimacy is great, especially after the time spent in pregnancy and childbirth The responsible mother, however, will strive to get her own closeness needs met by other adults in her life. She will encourage the “hatching” of her baby, knowing she is preparing him or her to be equipped to “leave and cleave.”
At this point, most infants don’t yet have the ability to understand and respond appropriately to the word no. Keeping them out of danger by picking them up and removing them from unsafe places is the best route.
Ten to Eighteen Months
At this “practicing” stage, your baby begins not only talking, but also walking—and the possibilities stretch out before her. The world is this child’s oyster—and she spends a lot of time finding ways to open it up and play with it. Now she has the emotional and cognitive ability to understand and respond to the word no.
Boundaries become increasingly important during this stage, both having and hearing limits. Allowing the no muscle to begin developing is crucial at this age. No is your child’s way of finding out whether taking responsibility for her life has good results—or whether no causes someone to withdraw. As parents, learn to rejoice in your baby’s no.
At the same time, you have the delicate task of helping your child see that she is not the center of the universe. There are limits in life. There are consequences for scribbling on doors and screaming in church. Yet you need to do this without quenching the sense of excitement and interest in the world that she has been developing.
Eighteen to Thirty-six Months
The child is now learning the important task of taking responsibility for a separate yet connected soul. The practicing child gives way to the more sober child who is realizing that life has limits, but that being separate does not mean that we can’t be attached. In this phase, the following abilities are goals:
1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, without giving up a sense of self and one’s freedom to be apart.
2. The ability to say appropriate nos to others without fear of loss of love.
3. The ability to take appropriate nos from others without withdrawing emotionally
At eighteen to thirty-six months the child needs to learn to be autonomous. She wants to be free of parental rule, but this desire is conflicted by her deep dependence on her parents. The wise parent will help her gain a sense of individualism and accept her loss of omnipotence, but without losing attachment.
To teach a child boundaries at this stage, you need to respect her no whenever appropriate, yet maintain your own firm no. It’s easy for you to try to win all the skirmishes. But there are simply too many. You will end up losing the war because you’ve lost the big picture—the attachment. Don’t waste your energy trying to control a random whirlwind. Pick your battles carefully and choose the important ones to win.
Wise parents will rejoice in children’s fun times, but will consistently and uniformly keep solid limits with the practicing child. At this age, children can learn the rules of the house as well as the consequences for breaking them. One workable process of discipline is listed below:
1. First infraction. Tell the child not to color on the bed sheet. Try to help the child meet her need in another way—using a coloring book or a pad of plain paper to crayon on instead of a bed-sheet, for example.
2. Second infraction. Again, tell the child no, and state the consequence. She will need to take a time out for one minute or lose the crayons for the rest of the day.
3. Third infraction. Administer the consequences, explaining why, then give the child a few minutes to be angry and separate from parents.
4. Comfort and reconnection. Hold and comfort the child, helping her reattach with you. This helps her differentiate between consequences and a loss of love. Painful consequences should never include a loss of connection.
Three to Five Years
During this phase, children move into a period of sex-role development. Each child identifies with the same-sex parent. Little boys want to be like Dad, and little girls like Mom. They also develop competitive feelings toward that same parent, wishing to marry the opposite-sex parent, defeating the same-sex parent in the process. They are preparing for adult sex roles later in life.
Boundary work by parents is important here. Gently but firmly, mothers need to allow their daughters to identify and to compete. They must also deal with the possessiveness of their sons, letting them know that “I know you’d like to marry Mom, but Mom’s married to Dad.” Fathers have to do the same job with their sons and daughters. This helps children learn to identify with the opposite—sex parent and take on appropriate characteristics.
Parents who fear the budding sexuality of their children will often become critical of these intense longings. Their own fear may cause them to attack or to shame their child, causing her to repress her sexuality. At the other extreme, the needy parent will sometimes emotionally, or even physically, seduce the child of the opposite sex. The mother who tells her son that “Daddy doesn’t understand me—— you’re the only one who can” is ensuring years of confusion about sex roles for her son. Mature parents need too keep a boundary between allowing sex role typing to emerge—and keeping the lines between parent and child clear.
Six to Eleven Years
During what is called latency, or the years of industry, the child is preparing for the upcoming thrust into adolescence. These years are the last true years of childhood. They are important for learning task orientation through school- work and play, and for learning to connect with same-sex peers
An extremely busy time for work and friends, this period carries its town boundary tasks for parents. Here, you need to help your kids establish the fundamentals of tasks: doing homework, house chores, and projects. They need to learn planning and the discipline of keeping at a job until it’s finished. They need to learn such boundary work as delay of gratification, goal orientation, and budgeting tune.
Eleven to Eighteen Years
Adolescence, the final step before adulthood, involves important tasks such as sexual maturation, a sense of solidifying identity in any surrounding, career leanings, and love choices. It can be a frightening yet exciting time for both child and parents.
By this point, the “de-parenting process should have begun. Things are beginning to shift between you and youngster. Instead of controlling your child, you influence her. You increase her freedom, as well as responsibility. You renegotiate restrictions, limits, and consequences with more flexibility.
All of these changes are like the countdown of a NASA space shuttle. You are preparing for the launching of a young adult into the world. Wise parents keep the imminent catapulting of their teens into society in the back of their minds at all times. The question they must always struggle with is no longer, “How can I make them behave?” but rather, “How can I help them survive on their own?”
Teens need to be setting their own relational, scheduling, values, and money boundaries as much as possible. And they should suffer real-life consequences when they cross their boundaries. The seventeen-year-told who is still disciplined with TV and phone restrictions may have real problems at college in one year. Professors, deans, and residence hall assistants don’t impose these kinds of restrictions; they resort to tactics such as failing grades, suspension, and expulsion.
If you are the parent of a teen who hasn’t had boundary training, you may feel at a loss about what to do. You need too begin at whatever point your teens are. When their ability to say and hear no is deficient, clarifying house rules and consequences can often help in the last few years before the youth leaves home.
Symptoms such as the following, however, may indicate a more serious problem:
• Isolation of the teen from family members
• Depressed mood
• Rebellious behavior
• Continual conflict in family
• Wrong type of friends
• School problems
• Eating disorders
• Alcohol use
• Drug use
• Suicidal ideas or behavior
Many parents, observing these problems, react with either too many boundaries, or too few. The too- strict parent runs the risk of alienating the almost—adult from the home connection. The too-lenient parent wants to be the child’s best friend at a time the teen needs someone to respect. At this point, parents should consider consulting a therapist who understands teen issues. The stakes are simply too high to ignore professional help.
Types of Discipline
Many parents are confused by how to teach children to respect boundaries. They read countless books and articles on spanking, time-outs, restrictions, and allowances. While this question is beyond the scope of this book, a few thoughts may help organize the searching parent.
1. Consequences are intended to increase the child’s sense of responsibility and control over his life. Discipline that increases the child’s sense of helplessness isn’t helpful. Dragging a sixteen-year-old girl to class doesn’t build the internal motivation she’ll need in two years when she’s in college. A system of rewards and consequences that help her choose school for her own benefit has much better possibilities for success.
2. Consequences must he age-appropriate. You need to think through the meaning of your discipline. Spanking, for example, humiliates and angers a teenager; however, administered correctly, it can help build structure for a four-year-old.
3. Consequences must be related to the seriousness of the infraction. Just as the penal system has different prison stays for different crimes, you must be able to distinguish between minor and severe infractions. Otherwise, severe penalties become meaningless.
A client once told me, “I got whippings for little things and for big things. So I started getting more involved in big things. It just seemed more efficient.” Once you’ve been sentenced to death, you don’t have much to gain by being good!
4. The goal of boundaries is an internal sense of motivation, with self-induced consequences. Successful parenting means that our kids want to get out of bed and go to school, be responsible, be empathic, and be caring because that’s important to them, not because its important to us. It’s only when love and limits are a genuine part of the child’s character that true maturity can occur. Otherwise, we are raising compliant parrots who will, in time, self-destruct.
Parents have a sober responsibility: teaching their children to have an internal sense of boundaries and to respect the boundaries of others. It’s sober because the Bible says it’s sober: Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).
There are certainly no guarantees that our training will be heeded. Children have the responsibility to listen and learn. The older they are, the more responsibility they have. Yet as we learn about our town boundary issues, take responsibility for them, and grow up ourselves, we increase our kids’ chances to learn boundaries in an adult world in which these abilities will be sorely needed—every day of their lives.
The experience had so shaken Shannon and her husband, Gerald that they called and made an appointment with me to discuss what had happened. Her shame and guilt were intense. She avoided eye contact with me as she told her story.
The several hours before Shannon had lost control with Robby had been horrible. Gerald and she had had an argument over breakfast. He had left for work without saying good-bye. Then one-year-old Tanya spilled cereal all over the floor. And Robby chose that morning to do everything he’d been told not to for the past three years. He pulled the cat’s tail. He figured out how to open the front door, and he ran outside into the yard and into the street. He smeared Shannon’s lipstick all over the white dining room wall, and he pushed Tanya to the floor
This last incident was the straw that broke Shannon’s back. Seeing Tanya lying on the floor, crying, with Robby standing over her with a defiantly pleased look, was too much. Shannon saw red and impulsively ran to her son. You know the rest of the story.
After she had calmed down a little, I asked Shannon how she and Gerald normally disciplined Robby.
“Well, we don’t want to alienate Robby, or quench his spirit,” Gerald began. “Being negative is so … so … negative. So we try to reason with him. Sometimes we’ll warn him that ‘you won’t get ice cream tonight.’ Sometimes we try to praise good things he does. And sometimes we try to ignore the bad behavior. Then maybe he’ll stop it.”
“Doesn’t he push the limits?”
Both parents nodded. “You wouldn’t believe it,” Shannon said. “It’s like he doesn’t hear us. He keeps on doing what he jolly well pleases. And generally, he’ll keep it up until one of us explodes and yells at him. I guess we just have a problem child.”
“Well, there’s certainly a problem, I replied. “But perhaps Robby has been trained to not respond to anything but out-of-control rage. Let’s talk about boundaries and kids….”
Of all the areas in which boundaries are crucially important, none is more relevant than that of raising children. How we approach boundaries and child rearing will have enormous impact on the characters of our kids. On how they develop values. On how well they do in school. On the friends they pick. On whom they marry. And on how well they do in a career.
The Importance of Family
God, at his deepest level, is a lover (1 John 4:8). He is relationally oriented and relationally driven. He desires connection with us from womb to tomb: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). God’s loving nature isn’t passive. It’s active. Love multiplies itself. God the relational Lover is also God the aggressive Creator. He wants to fill up his universe with beings who care for him— and for each other.
The family is the social unit God invented to fill up the world with representatives of his loving character. It’s a place for nurturing and developing babies until they’re mature enough to go out of the family as adults and to multiply his image in other surroundings.
God first picked the nation Israel to be his children. After centuries of resistance by Israel, however, God chose the church: “Because of [Israel’s] transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious” (Rom. 11:11). The body of Christ has the same role as Israel had—to multiply God’s love and character.
The church is often described as a family. We are to do good “especially to those who belong to the family of believers (Gal. 6:10). Believers “are members of God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). We are to “know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household” (1 Tim. 3:15).
These and many other powerful passages show us how God “thinks family.” He explains his heart as a parent would. He’s a daddy. He likes his job. This biblical portrayal of God helps show us how parenting is such a vital part of bringing God’s own character to this planet in our own little ones.
Boundaries and Responsibility
God, the good parent, wants to help us, his children, grow up. He wants to see us “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Part of this maturing process is helping us know how to take responsibility for our lives.
It’s the same with our own flesh-and-blood kids. Second only to learning how to bond, to form strong attachments, the most important thing parents can give children is a sense of responsibility —knowing what they are responsible for and knowing what they aren’t responsible for, knowing how to say no and knowing how to accept no. Responsibility is a gift of enormous value.
We’ve all been around middle-aged people who have the boundaries of an eighteen-month-old. They have tantrums or sulk when others set limits on them, or they simply fold and comply with others just to keep the peace. Remember that these adult people started off as little people. They learned long, long ago to either fear or hate boundaries. The relearning process for adults is laborious.
Instilling vs. Repairing Boundaries
A wise mother of adult children once watched her younger friend struggle with her youngster. The child was refusing to behave, and the young mother was quickly losing her mind. Affirming the mother’s decision to make the child sit on a chair by himself, the older woman said, “Do it now, Dear. Discipline the child now—and you just might survive adolescence.
Developing boundaries in young children is that proverbial ounce of prevention. If we teach responsibility, limit setting, and delay of gratification early on, the smoother our children’s later years of life will be. The later we start, the harder we and they have to work.
If you’re a parent of older children, don’t lose heart. It just means boundary development will be met with more resistance. In their minds, they do not have a lot to gain by learning boundaries. You’ll need to spend more time working on it, getting more support from friends—and praying harder! We’ll review age- appropriate boundary tasks for the different stages of childhood later in this chapter.
Boundary Development in Children
The work of boundary development in children is the work of learning responsibility. As we teach them the merits and limits of responsibility, we teach them autonomy—we prepare them to take on the tasks of adulthood.
The Scriptures have much to say about the role of boundary setting in child rearing. Usually, we call it discipline. The Hebrew and Greek words that scholars translate as “discipline” mean “teaching.” This teaching has both a positive and a negative slant.
The positive facets of discipline are proactivity, prevention, and instruction. Positive discipline is sitting someone down to educate and train him in a task: fathers are to raise children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The negative facets of discipline are correction, chasetisement, and consequences. Negative discipline is letting children suffer the results of their actions to learn a lesson in responsibility: “Stern discipline awaits him who leaves the path” (Prov. 15:10).
Good child rearing involves both preventive training and practice, and correctional consequences. For example, you set a ten o’clock bedtime for your fourteen-year-old. “It’s there so that you’ll get enough sleep to be alert in school, you tell her. You’ve just disciplined positively. Then your teen dawdles until 11:30 P.M. The next day you say, “Because you did not get to bed on time last night, you may not use the phone today.” You’ve just disciplined negatively.
Why are both the carrot and the whip necessary in good boundary development? Because God uses practice—trial and error—to help us grow up. We learn maturity by getting information, applying it poorly, making mistakes, learning from our mistakes, and doing better the next time.
Practice is necessary in all areas of life: in learning to ski, write an essay, or operate a computer. We need practice in developing a deep love relationship and in learning to study the Bible. And it’s just as true in our spiritual and emotional growth: “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Heb.5:14). Practice is important in learning boundaries and responsibility. Our mistakes are our teachers.
Discipline is an external boundary, designed to develop internal boundaries in our children. It provides a structure of safety until the child has enough structure in his character to not need it. Good discipline always moves the child toward more internal structure and more responsibility.
We need to distinguish between discipline and punishment. Punishment is payment for wrongdoing. Legally, it’s paying a penalty for breaking the law. Punishment doesn’t leave a lot of room for practice, however. It’s not a great teacher. The price is too high: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). Punishment does not leave much room for mistakes.
Discipline, however, is different. Discipline is not payment for a wrong. It’s the natural law of God: our actions reap consequences.
Discipline is different from punishment because God is finished punishing us. Punishment ended on the cross for all those who accept Christ as Savior: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Christ’s suffering paid for our wrongdoing.
In addition, discipline and punishment have a different relationship to time. Punishment looks back. It focuses on making payment for wrongs one in the past. Christ’s suffering was payment, for example, for our sin. Discipline, however, looks forward. The lessons we learn from discipline help us to not make the same mistakes again: God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness”(Heb.12: 10).
How does that help us? It frees us to make mistakes without fear of judgment, without fear of loss of relationship: “Therefore, there is now not condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). The freedom of the cross allows us to practice without having to pay a terrible price. The only danger is consequences — not isolation and judgment.
Take, for example, the mother who tells her ten-year-old, “You smart off again, and I won’t love you anymore. The youngster is immediately in a no-win situation. She can either rebel and lose her most important relationship in life, or she can comply and become externally obedient, losing any chance of practicing confrontational skills. Now, compare that response with this, I’ll never stop loving you. That’s a constant in my heart. However, if you smart off again you’ve lost your boom box for three days.” The relationship is still intact. There’s no condemnation. And the child gets an opportunity to choose responsibility or suffer consequences—with no risk of loosing love and safety. This is the way to maturity, to learning to eat solid food: the safe practice of discipline.
The Boundary Needs of Children
What specific needs do boundaries meet in our kids? Limit-setting abilities have several important jobs that will pay enormous dividends throughout life.
Self-Protection
Have you ever seen anything more helpless than the human infant? Human babies are less able to take care of themselves than animal babies. God designed the newborn months as a means for the mother and father (or another caregiver) to connect deeply with their infant, knowing that without their minute-by-minute care, the baby would not survive. All this time and energy translates into an enduring attachment, in which the child learns to feel safe in the world.
God’s program of maturation, however, doesn’t stop there. Mom and Dad can’t always be there to care and provide. The task of protection needs to ultimately pass on to the children. When they grow up, they need to protect themselves.
Boundaries are our way of protecting and safeguarding our souls. Boundaries are designed to keep the good in and the bad out. And skills such as saying no, telling the truth, and maintaining physical distance need to be developed in the family structure to allow the child to take on the responsibility of self-protection.
Consider the following two twelve-year-old boys:
Jimmy is talking with his parents at the dinner table. “Guess what —some kids wanted me to smoke pot with them. When I told them I didn’t want to, they said I was a sissy. I told them they were dumb. I like some of them, but if they can’t like me because I don’t smoke pot, I guess they aren’t really my friends.”
Paul comes home after school with red eyes, slurred speech, and coordination difficulties. When asked by his concerned parents what is wrong, he denies everything until, finally, he blurts out, “Everybody’s doing it. Why do you hate my friends?”
Both Jimmy and Paul come from Christian homes with lots of love and an adherence to biblical values. Why did they turn out so differently? Jimmy’s family allowed disagreements between parent and child and gave him practice in the skill of boundary setting, even with them. Jimmy’s mom would be holding and hugging her two-year-old when he would get fidgety. He’d say, “Down,” meaning, “Let me get a little breathing space, Ma.” Fighting her own impulses to hold on to her child, she would set him down on the floor and say, “Wanna play with your trucks?”
Jimmy’s dad used the Salute philosophy. When wrestling with his Son on the floor, he tried to pay attention to Jimmy’s limits. When the going got too rough, or when jimmy was tired, he could say, “Stop, Daddy,” and Dad would get up. They’d go to another game.
Jimmy’ was receiving boundary training, He was learning that when he was scared, in discomfort, or wanted to change things, he could say no. This is little word gave him a sense of power in his life. It took him out of a helpless or compliant position. And Jimmy could say it without receiving an angry and hurt response, or a manipulative countermove, such as. “But Jimmy, Mommy needs to hold you now, okay?”
Jimmy learned from infancy on that his boundaries were good and that he could use them to protect himself. He learned to resist things that weren’t good for him.
A hallmark of Jimmy’s family was permission to disagree. When, for example, Jimmy would fight his parents about his bedtime, they never withdrew or punished him for disagreeing. Instead, they would listen to his reasoning, and. if it seemed appropriate, they would change their minds. If not, they would maintain their boundaries.
Jimmy was also given a vote in some family matters. When family night out would come up, his parents listened to his opinion on whether they should go to a movie, play board games, or play basketball. Was this a family with no limits? On the contrary! It was a family who took boundary setting seriously—as a skill to develop in its children.
This was good practice for resisting in the evil day (Eph. 5:16), when some of Jimmy’s friends turned on him and pressured him to take drugs. How was Jimmy able to refuse? Because by then, he’d had ten or eleven years of practice disagreeing with people who were important to him without losing their love. He didn’t fear abandonment in standing up against his friends. He’d done it many times successfully with his family with no loss of love.
Paul, on the other hand, came from a different family setting. In his home, no had two different responses. His mom would be hurt and withdraw and pout. She would send guilt messages, such as “How can you say no to your mom who loves you?” His dad would get angry, threaten him, and say things like, “Don’t talk back to me, Mister.”
It didn’t take long for Paul to learn that to have his way, he had to be externally compliant. He developed a strong yes on the outside, seeming to agree with his Family’s values and control. Whatever he thought about a subject—the dinner menu, TV restrictions, church choices, clothes, or curfews— he stuffed inside.
Once, when he had tried to resist his mother’s hug, she had immediately withdrawn from him, pushing him away with the words. “Someday you’ll feel sorry for hurting your mother’s feelings like that.” Day by Day, Paul was being trained to not set limits.
As a result of his learned boundarylessness, Paul seemed to be a content, respectful son. The teens, however, are a crucible for kids. We find out what kind of character has actually been built into our children during this difficult passage.
Paul Folded. He gave in to his friends’ pressure. Is it any wonder that the first people he said no to were his parents— at twelve years old? Resentment and the years of not having boundaries were beginning to erode the compliant, easy-to-live-with false self he’d developed to survive.
Taking Responsibility for One’s Needs
The group therapy session I was leading was quiet. I’d just asked Janice an unanswerable question. The question was, “What do you need? She looked confused, became thoughtful, and sat back in her chair.
Janice had just described a week of painful loss: her husband had made moves to separate, her kids were out of control, and her job was in jeopardy. The concern on the faces of the group members, who were all working on issues of attachment and safety, was evident. Yet no one knew quite how to help. So when I asked the question, I was asking it for all of us. But Janice couldn’t answer.
This was typical of Janice’s background. She’d spent most of her childhood taking responsibility for her parents’ feelings. The peacemaker of the house, she was always smoothing over the ruffled feathers of either parent, with soothing words like, “Mom, I’m sure Dad didn’t mean to blow up at you—he’s had a rough day.”
The result of such unbiblical responsibility toward her family was clear in Janice’s life: a sense of over responsibility for others and a lack of attunement toward her own needs. Janice had radar out for the hurts of others; but the radar pointed her way was broken. It was no wonder she couldn’t answer my question. Janice didn’t understand her own God given, legitimate needs. She had no vocabulary for this thinking.
The story doles, however, have a happy ending. One of the group members said, “If I were in your shoes, I know what I’d need. I’d really need to know that you people in this room cared for me, that you didn’t see me as a colossal, shameful failure, and that you’d pray for me and let me call you on the phone this week for support.
Janice’s eyes began watering. Something about her fiend’s empathic statement touched her in a place she couldn’t herself touch. And she allowed the comfort that comes from others who have been comforted to take its place inside her (2 Cor. 1:4).
Janice’s story illustrates the second fruit of boundary development in our children: the ability to take ownership of, or responsibility for, our own needs. God intends for us to know when we’re hungry, lonely, in trouble, overwhelmed, or in need of a break—and then to take initiative to get what we need. The Scriptures present Jesus as understanding this point when he left a crowd of people in a boat in a time of great ministry and need: “because so many people were coming and going that [he and his disciples] did not even have a chance to eat” (Mark 6:31).
Boundaries play a primary role in this process. Our limits create a spiritual and emotional space, a separateness, between ourselves and others. This allows our needs to be heard and understood. Without a solid sense of boundaries, it becomes difficult to filter out our needs from those of others. There is too much static in the relationship.
When children can be taught to experience their own needs, as opposed to those of others, they have been given a genuine advantage in life. They are able to better avoid the burnout that comes from not taking care of one’s self.
How can we help tour children experience their own individual needs? The best thing a parent can do is too encourage verbal expression of those needs, even when they don’t “go with the family flow.” When children have permission to ask for something that goes against the grain— even though they might not receive it—they develop a sense of what they need.
Below are some ways you can help your children:
• Allow them to talk about their anger.
• Allow them to express grief, loss, or sadness without trying to cheer them up and talk them out of their feelings.
• Encourage then too ask questions and not assume your words are the equivalent of Scripture (this takes a pretty secure parent!).
• Ask them what they are feeling when they seen isolated or distressed; help them put words to their negative feelings. Do not try to keep things light for a false sense of cooperation and family closeness.
The first aspect of taking ownership over one’s needs, then, is too identify them. That’s where our spiritual radar comes in. Janice’s radar was broken amid undeveloped, and she wasn’t able to identify her needs.
The second aspect of taking ownership is to initiate responsible caretaking for ourselves—as opposed to placing the burden on someone else. We must allow our children to experience the painful consequences of their own irresponsibility and mistakes. This is the “training” of Hebrews 5:14 and the “discipline” of Hebrews 12. By the time they are ready to leave home, our children should have internalized a deep sense of personal responsibility for their lives. They should hold these convictions:
• My success or failure in life largely depends on me.
• Though I am to look to God and others for comfort and instruction, I alone am responsible for my choices.
• Though I am deeply affected by my significant relationships throughout my life, I can’t blame my problems on anyone but myself.
• Though I will always will fail and need support, I can’t depend on some over responsible individual to constantly bail me out of spiritual, emotional, financial, or relational crises.
This sense of “my life is up to me” is founded in God’s concern that we take responsibility for our lives. He wants us to use our talents in productive ways, as Jesus discussed in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30). And this sense of responsibility will follow us all through our adult lives—and even beyond the grave, at the judgment seat of Christ.
You can imagine how well not taking ownership over our lives will come across to the Lord then: “But I had a dysfunctional family.” “But I was lonely.” “But I didn’t have much energy.” The rationalizing “but” will have as much impact as the excuses of the servant in the parable of the talents did. This isn’t to say that we aren’t deeply influenced for better or worse by our backgrounds and our various stressors. We certainly are. But we are ultimately responsible for what we do with our injured, immature souls.
Wise parents allow their children to undergo “safe suffering.” “Safe suffering” means allowing a child to experience age-appropriate consequences. Allowing a six-year-old to go outside after dark isn’t training her for adulthood. She is making decision that she doesn’t have the maturity to make. She shouldn’t be placed in a position of making these choices in the first plane.
Pat’s parents allowed their daughter to experience safe suffering. At the start of senior high, they gave Pat an entire semester’s allowance. Pat was responsible for paying for her school meals, clothing, social outings, and extracurricular activities. The amount was enough for this and a little more. On the surface it looked like a teenager’s dream—all this money and no restrictions on how she spent it!
The first semester Pat bought some beautiful outfits. She went out to lots of functions with her friends. And she even treated them several times. That lasted for about one month out of the three and a half. The next two and a half months were lean ones. Pat stayed home a lot, saving her remaining money for school lunches, and she wore her new outfits over and over again.
The next semester was better—and by the beginning of her sophomore year, she had established a bank account and a workable budget. Pat was developing boundaries. Normally a budding shopping addict, she began saying no to clothes, CD’s, food, and magazines that normally would have been a minimum requirement for her. She began learning to take responsibility for her own life. And she didn’t end up like many college graduates who, after years of having someone else bail them out, can’t cook, clean, or keep a checkbook balanced.
It’s important to tie consequences as closely to the actions of the child as possible. This best replicates real life.
Homework projects are another area in which parents can either help the child take on responsibility—or create the illusion of the eternal, omnipresent parent who will always take up the slack. It’s difficult when your child comes to you tearfully, saying, “I have a ten-page report clue tomorrow— and I just started.” Our impulse, as loving parents, is to bail them out by doing the research, nor the organization, or the typing. Or all three.
Why do we do this? Because we love our kids. We long for the best for them just as God longs for the best for us. And yet, just as God allows us too experience our failures, we may need to let our kids mar a good report card with a bad grade. This is often the consequence of not planning ahead.
Having a Sense of Control and Choice
“I won’t go to the dentist—and you can’t make me go!” Pamela stamped her eleven-year-old feet and scowled at her father, Sal, who was waiting at the front door.
There had been a time when Sal would have reacted in a knee-jerk fashion to Pamela’s power move. He would have said something like, “Well, we’ll see about that!” and physically dragged the screaming child into the car.
However, lots not family no counseling and reading up on these issues had prepared Sal for the inevitable. Calmly he said to her, “You’re absolutely right, Honey. I can’t make you go to the dentist. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. But remember our rule: if you choose not to go, you’re also choosing not to go to the party tomorrow night. I’ll certainly respect either decision. Shall I cancel your appointment?’
Pamela looked perplexed and thought a minute. Then, slowly, she replied, “I’ll go. But I’m not going because I have to.” Pamela was right. She was choosing to go to her appointment because she wanted to attend the party.
Children need to have a sense of control and choice in their lives. They need to see themselves not as the dependent, helpless pawns of parents, but as choosing, willing, initiative-taking agents of their own lives.
Children begin life in a helpless, dependent fashion. Godly parenting, however, seeks to help children learn to think, make decisions, and master their environment in all aspects of life. This runs the gamut of deciding what too wear in the morning to what courses to take in school. Learning to make age-appropriate decisions helps children have a sense of security and control in their lives.
Anxious and well—meaning parents attempt too prevent their children from making painful decisions. They shield them from fouling up and skinning their knees. Their motto is, “Here, let me decide that for you.” The result is that kids become atrophied in a very important part of the image of God that should be developing in their character: their assertion, or change-making abilities. Children need a sense that their lives, their destinies are largely theirs to determine, within the province of God’s sovereignty. This helps them weigh choices, rather than avoid them. They learn to appreciate the consequences of choices made, rather than resenting the choices made for them.
Delaying Gratification of Goals
The word now was made for young children. It’s where they live. Try telling a two-year-old she can have dessert tomorrow. She doesn’t buy it. That means “never” to her. Newborns, in fact, don’t have the capacity to understand “later.” That’s why a six-month-old panics when Mom leaves the room. He is convinced that she is irrevocably gone forever.
Yet, sometime in our development we learn the value of “later,” of delaying one good for a greater good. We call this skill delay of gratification. It’s the ability to say no to our impulses, wishes, and desires for some gain down the road.
The Scriptures place great value on this ability. God uses this skill too help us see the benefits of planning and preparing. Jesus is our prime example. “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).
Generally, this skill isn’t relevant until after the first year of life, as bonding needs take precedence during that time. However, teaching delay of gratification can begin quickly boy the beginning of the Second year. Dessert comes after carrots, not before.
Older children also need to learn this skill. The family can’t buy certain clothes or recreational items until later in the year. Again, the boundaries developed during this process are invaluable later in life. They can prevent a child from becoming an adult who is a broken, chaotic, impulse-driven slave too Madison Avenue. Our children can become like ants, who are self-sufficient, instead of sluggards, who are always in crisis (Prov. 6:6-11).
Learning how too delay gratification helps children have a goal orientation. They learn to save time and money for things that are important too them, and they value what they have chosen to buy. One family I know had the son save up his money for his first car. He began with a plan, with Dad’s help, when he was thirteen. When all his weekend amid summer jobs finally paid off in a car when he was sixteen, he treated that car like it was fine china—you could eat lunch off the hood. He had counted the cost, and valued the result (Luke 14:28).
Respecting the Limits of Others
From an early age, children need to be able to accept the limits of parents, siblings, and friends. They need to know that others don’t always want to play with them, that others may not want to watch the same TV shows they want, and that others may want to eat dinner at a different restaurant than they do. They need to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them.
This is important for a couple of reasons. First, the ability to learn to accept limits teaches us to take responsibility for ourselves. Knowing that others are not always available for us, at our beck and call, helps us too become inwardly directed instead of externally driven. It helps us carry our own knapsack.
Have you ever been around a child who can’t hear no, who keeps whining, cajoling, throwing a tantrum, or pouting till he gets his way? The problem is, the longer we hate and resist the limits of others, the more dependent we will be on others. We expect others to take care of us, rather than simply taking care of ourselves.
At any rate, God has constructed life itself to teach us this law. It’s the only way we can live on this planet together. Sooner on later, someone will say a no to us that we can’t ignore. It’s built into the fabric of life. Observe the progression of nos in the life of the person who resists others’ limits:
1. the no of parents
2. the no of siblings
3. the no of schoolteachers
4. the no of school friends
5. the no of bosses and supervisors
6. the no of spouses
7. the no of health problems from overeating, alcoholism, or an irresponsible lifestyle
8. the no of police, the courts, ana even prison
Some people learn to accept boundaries early in life, even as early as stage number one. But some people have to go all the way to number eight before they get the picture that we have to accept life’s limits: “Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge” (Prov. 19:27). Many out-of-control adolescents don’t mature until their thirties, when they become tired of not having a steady job and a place to stay. They have to hit bottom financially, and sometimes they may even have to live on the streets for a while. In time, they begin sticking with a career, saving money, and starting to grow up. They gradually begin to accept life’s limits.
No matter how tough we think we are, there’s always someone tougher. If we don’t teach our children to take a no, someone who loves them far less may take on the job. Someone tougher. Someone stronger .And most parents would much rather spare having their children go through this suffering. The earlier we teach limits, the better.
A second, even more important, reason why accepting the limits of others is important for kids is this: Heeding others’ boundaries helps children to love. At its heart, the idea of respecting others’ boundaries is the basis for empathy, or loving others as we’d like to be loved. Children need to be given the grace of having their no respected, and they need to learn to give that same grace to others. As they feel empathy for the needs of others, they mature and deepen in their love for God and others. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Say, for example, that your six-year-old accidentally but carelessly bonks you on the head hard with a softball. To ignore it, or act like it didn’t hurt, is to give the child the feeling that his actions have no impact. He can then avoid any sense of responsibility or awareness of others’ needs or hurts. However, telling him, I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but that ball really hurt me—try to be a little more careful” helps him see, without condemnation, that he can hurt people he loves and that his actions do matter.
If this principle isn’t taught, it’s difficult for children to grow up as loving people. Frequently, they become self-centered or controlling. At that point, God’s program of maturity is more difficult. A client of mine had been trained by his family to ignore others’ limits. His subsequent manipulation had landed him in jail for stealing. Yet this process, painful though it was, taught him empathy.
“I really never knew that other people had needs and hurts,” he once explained to me. “I was raised to concentrate on Number One. And when I began getting confronted on my lack of respect for others’ needs, something happened inside. A space opened up inside my heart for others. I didn’t ignore my own needs—but for the first time, I saw progress. I actually started feeling guilty about how my actions have hurt my wife and family.”
Did he have a long way to go? Absolutely. But he was on the right road. Learning boundaries later in life was a start to becoming an authentically, biblically loving person.
Seasonal Boundaries: Age-Appropriate Limits Training
If this was the first chapter you turned to when you glanced over the table of contents, chances are you’re a parent. Chances are also that you may be experiencing boundary difficulties with your children. Perhaps you’re reading this simply in an effort to prevent problems. But more likely you’re in some pain from which you need relief: Your newborn won’t stop shrieking. Your toddler runs the household. Your elementary school student has behavioral problems at school. Your junior high kid smarts off. Your high schooler is drinking.
All of these issues indicate possible boundary problems. And this section provides an outline on the age—appropriate boundary tasks your children should be learning. As parents, we need to take into consideration our children’s developmental needs and abilities to avoid asking them to do something they can’t do, or to avoid asking to little of them.
Below are the basic tasks for the different stages of childhood. For more detailed information on birth to age three, refer to chapter 4 on how boundaries are developed in childhood.
Birth to Five Months
At this stage, the newborn needs too establish an attachment with Mother, Dad, or the primary caregiver. A sense of belonging, of being safe and welcome are the tasks the child needs to accomplish. Setting limits is not as much an issue here as providing security for the infant.
The only real boundary here is the soothing presence of the mother. She protects the infant. Mom’s job is to help her newborn contain intense, frightening, and conflicting feelings. Left by themselves, infants are terrorized by their aloneness and lack of internal structure.
For centuries mothers—including Mary, Jesus’ mother— have swaddled their babies, or wrapped cloths tightly around them. While swaddling keeps the baby’s body heat regulated, the tight wrappings also help the infant feel safe— a sort of external boundary. The baby knows where he or she begins and ends. When newborns are undressed, they often panic about the loss of structure around them.
Some well-meaning Christian teachers call for infant training theories that schedule the feeding and holding of infants. These techniques try to teach an infant not to cry or demand comfort because “the child is in control instead of the parent,” or because “that demand is evidence of the child’s selfish, sinful nature.” These theories can be horribly destructive when not understood biblically on developmentally.
The screaming four-month-old child is trying to find out whether the world is a reasonably safe place or not. She is in a state of deep terror and isolation. She hasn’t learned too feel comfort when no one is around. To put her on the parents’ schedule instead of her own for holding and feeding is to “condemn the innocent,” as Jesus said (Matt. 12:7).
These teachers say their programs are biblical because they work. “When I stopped picking her up from her crib at night, my four-month-old stopped crying,” they’ll say. That may be true. But another explanation for the cessation of crying is infant depression, a condition in which the child gives up hope and withdraws. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12).
Teaching delay of gratification shouldn’t begin until after the first year of life, when a foundation of safety has been established between baby and mother. Just as grace always precedes truth (John 1:17), attachment must come before separation.
Five to Ten Months
As we learned in Chapter 4, children in the last half of the first year of life are in the “hatching” phase. They are learning that “Mother and I aren’t the same. There’s a scary, fascinating world out there that babies literally crawl toward. Though they have tremendous dependency needs, infants are beginning to move out of their oneness with their mom.
To help their children develop good boundaries during this stage, parents need to encourage attempts at separateness, while still being the anchors the child clings to. Allow your child to be fascinated with people and objects other than you. Make your home a safe place for your baby to explore.
Helping your children hatch, however, doesn’t mean neglecting the deep attachment necessary for their internal foundation, their rootedness and groundedness. This is still an infant’s primary work. You need to carefully tend to your child’s needs for bonding and emotional safety, while at the same time allowing the child to look outward, beyond you.
Many mothers find this transition from their child’s love affair with them to the big wide world difficult. The loss of such a deep intimacy is great, especially after the time spent in pregnancy and childbirth The responsible mother, however, will strive to get her own closeness needs met by other adults in her life. She will encourage the “hatching” of her baby, knowing she is preparing him or her to be equipped to “leave and cleave.”
At this point, most infants don’t yet have the ability to understand and respond appropriately to the word no. Keeping them out of danger by picking them up and removing them from unsafe places is the best route.
Ten to Eighteen Months
At this “practicing” stage, your baby begins not only talking, but also walking—and the possibilities stretch out before her. The world is this child’s oyster—and she spends a lot of time finding ways to open it up and play with it. Now she has the emotional and cognitive ability to understand and respond to the word no.
Boundaries become increasingly important during this stage, both having and hearing limits. Allowing the no muscle to begin developing is crucial at this age. No is your child’s way of finding out whether taking responsibility for her life has good results—or whether no causes someone to withdraw. As parents, learn to rejoice in your baby’s no.
At the same time, you have the delicate task of helping your child see that she is not the center of the universe. There are limits in life. There are consequences for scribbling on doors and screaming in church. Yet you need to do this without quenching the sense of excitement and interest in the world that she has been developing.
Eighteen to Thirty-six Months
The child is now learning the important task of taking responsibility for a separate yet connected soul. The practicing child gives way to the more sober child who is realizing that life has limits, but that being separate does not mean that we can’t be attached. In this phase, the following abilities are goals:
1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, without giving up a sense of self and one’s freedom to be apart.
2. The ability to say appropriate nos to others without fear of loss of love.
3. The ability to take appropriate nos from others without withdrawing emotionally
At eighteen to thirty-six months the child needs to learn to be autonomous. She wants to be free of parental rule, but this desire is conflicted by her deep dependence on her parents. The wise parent will help her gain a sense of individualism and accept her loss of omnipotence, but without losing attachment.
To teach a child boundaries at this stage, you need to respect her no whenever appropriate, yet maintain your own firm no. It’s easy for you to try to win all the skirmishes. But there are simply too many. You will end up losing the war because you’ve lost the big picture—the attachment. Don’t waste your energy trying to control a random whirlwind. Pick your battles carefully and choose the important ones to win.
Wise parents will rejoice in children’s fun times, but will consistently and uniformly keep solid limits with the practicing child. At this age, children can learn the rules of the house as well as the consequences for breaking them. One workable process of discipline is listed below:
1. First infraction. Tell the child not to color on the bed sheet. Try to help the child meet her need in another way—using a coloring book or a pad of plain paper to crayon on instead of a bed-sheet, for example.
2. Second infraction. Again, tell the child no, and state the consequence. She will need to take a time out for one minute or lose the crayons for the rest of the day.
3. Third infraction. Administer the consequences, explaining why, then give the child a few minutes to be angry and separate from parents.
4. Comfort and reconnection. Hold and comfort the child, helping her reattach with you. This helps her differentiate between consequences and a loss of love. Painful consequences should never include a loss of connection.
Three to Five Years
During this phase, children move into a period of sex-role development. Each child identifies with the same-sex parent. Little boys want to be like Dad, and little girls like Mom. They also develop competitive feelings toward that same parent, wishing to marry the opposite-sex parent, defeating the same-sex parent in the process. They are preparing for adult sex roles later in life.
Boundary work by parents is important here. Gently but firmly, mothers need to allow their daughters to identify and to compete. They must also deal with the possessiveness of their sons, letting them know that “I know you’d like to marry Mom, but Mom’s married to Dad.” Fathers have to do the same job with their sons and daughters. This helps children learn to identify with the opposite—sex parent and take on appropriate characteristics.
Parents who fear the budding sexuality of their children will often become critical of these intense longings. Their own fear may cause them to attack or to shame their child, causing her to repress her sexuality. At the other extreme, the needy parent will sometimes emotionally, or even physically, seduce the child of the opposite sex. The mother who tells her son that “Daddy doesn’t understand me—— you’re the only one who can” is ensuring years of confusion about sex roles for her son. Mature parents need too keep a boundary between allowing sex role typing to emerge—and keeping the lines between parent and child clear.
Six to Eleven Years
During what is called latency, or the years of industry, the child is preparing for the upcoming thrust into adolescence. These years are the last true years of childhood. They are important for learning task orientation through school- work and play, and for learning to connect with same-sex peers
An extremely busy time for work and friends, this period carries its town boundary tasks for parents. Here, you need to help your kids establish the fundamentals of tasks: doing homework, house chores, and projects. They need to learn planning and the discipline of keeping at a job until it’s finished. They need to learn such boundary work as delay of gratification, goal orientation, and budgeting tune.
Eleven to Eighteen Years
Adolescence, the final step before adulthood, involves important tasks such as sexual maturation, a sense of solidifying identity in any surrounding, career leanings, and love choices. It can be a frightening yet exciting time for both child and parents.
By this point, the “de-parenting process should have begun. Things are beginning to shift between you and youngster. Instead of controlling your child, you influence her. You increase her freedom, as well as responsibility. You renegotiate restrictions, limits, and consequences with more flexibility.
All of these changes are like the countdown of a NASA space shuttle. You are preparing for the launching of a young adult into the world. Wise parents keep the imminent catapulting of their teens into society in the back of their minds at all times. The question they must always struggle with is no longer, “How can I make them behave?” but rather, “How can I help them survive on their own?”
Teens need to be setting their own relational, scheduling, values, and money boundaries as much as possible. And they should suffer real-life consequences when they cross their boundaries. The seventeen-year-told who is still disciplined with TV and phone restrictions may have real problems at college in one year. Professors, deans, and residence hall assistants don’t impose these kinds of restrictions; they resort to tactics such as failing grades, suspension, and expulsion.
If you are the parent of a teen who hasn’t had boundary training, you may feel at a loss about what to do. You need too begin at whatever point your teens are. When their ability to say and hear no is deficient, clarifying house rules and consequences can often help in the last few years before the youth leaves home.
Symptoms such as the following, however, may indicate a more serious problem:
• Isolation of the teen from family members
• Depressed mood
• Rebellious behavior
• Continual conflict in family
• Wrong type of friends
• School problems
• Eating disorders
• Alcohol use
• Drug use
• Suicidal ideas or behavior
Many parents, observing these problems, react with either too many boundaries, or too few. The too- strict parent runs the risk of alienating the almost—adult from the home connection. The too-lenient parent wants to be the child’s best friend at a time the teen needs someone to respect. At this point, parents should consider consulting a therapist who understands teen issues. The stakes are simply too high to ignore professional help.
Types of Discipline
Many parents are confused by how to teach children to respect boundaries. They read countless books and articles on spanking, time-outs, restrictions, and allowances. While this question is beyond the scope of this book, a few thoughts may help organize the searching parent.
1. Consequences are intended to increase the child’s sense of responsibility and control over his life. Discipline that increases the child’s sense of helplessness isn’t helpful. Dragging a sixteen-year-old girl to class doesn’t build the internal motivation she’ll need in two years when she’s in college. A system of rewards and consequences that help her choose school for her own benefit has much better possibilities for success.
2. Consequences must he age-appropriate. You need to think through the meaning of your discipline. Spanking, for example, humiliates and angers a teenager; however, administered correctly, it can help build structure for a four-year-old.
3. Consequences must be related to the seriousness of the infraction. Just as the penal system has different prison stays for different crimes, you must be able to distinguish between minor and severe infractions. Otherwise, severe penalties become meaningless.
A client once told me, “I got whippings for little things and for big things. So I started getting more involved in big things. It just seemed more efficient.” Once you’ve been sentenced to death, you don’t have much to gain by being good!
4. The goal of boundaries is an internal sense of motivation, with self-induced consequences. Successful parenting means that our kids want to get out of bed and go to school, be responsible, be empathic, and be caring because that’s important to them, not because its important to us. It’s only when love and limits are a genuine part of the child’s character that true maturity can occur. Otherwise, we are raising compliant parrots who will, in time, self-destruct.
Parents have a sober responsibility: teaching their children to have an internal sense of boundaries and to respect the boundaries of others. It’s sober because the Bible says it’s sober: Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).
There are certainly no guarantees that our training will be heeded. Children have the responsibility to listen and learn. The older they are, the more responsibility they have. Yet as we learn about our town boundary issues, take responsibility for them, and grow up ourselves, we increase our kids’ chances to learn boundaries in an adult world in which these abilities will be sorely needed—every day of their lives.
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