Hey Adults — Slip This Under your Intrusive Parent’s Door and See What Happens Next.

Hey Adults — Slip This Under your Intrusive Parent’s Door and See What Happens Next.

Yes, parents, there are rules you should follow if you want your adult kids to visit.

One of the most talked about subjects in my therapy room involves complaints about older adults who overstep their adult child’s boundaries. Someone said or did something that was an outrage, or what someone didn’t do was an outrage — How dare they? What the hell?

“My husband’s parents dropped by without telling us!”

“They bought things for our kids we didn’t want them to have!”

“My mother is judging my friends and love life!”

“My mother calls me four times a day!”

“My dad talks negatively to my brother about me, and negative about me to my brother.”

“My mother-in-law is judging my parenting.”

All these human annoyances and violations could end once and for all if people would just understand the basic rules of boundaries and practice them, but they won’t. Why not?

Guidelines on how to do it have been out there for years and very few seem to be running to learn them. Instead, people behave how they want, their friends and family complain about all the outrageous toe-stepping behaviors inflicted on them, they express self-righteous indignation, outrage, disgust, contempt, and sometimes shed tears. But does that motivate people on either side to do anything? No.

Before I again spoon-feed the general public about boundaries for parents of adults, which I fully expect will be anonymously delivered to every parent across North America, let’s look at some obstacles.

First obstacle, adult children are afraid to set boundaries with their parents. “Well, if I do that, X, Y and Z will happen, and I can’t handle that.”

I could probably do a stand-up comedy routine about all the excuses clients have given for why they must continue to allow others to inflict pain and suffering on them, but if you think about it, it’s not funny, it’s just pitiful and sad.

“I’ll be written out of the will,” the adult child says, “Live your life as if you’ll get nothing “ I say.

“Yes, but …” the client says.

“I will be cut off from seeing my sister or nieces or nephews,” the adult child says. “Maybe not, I say. Surely there are other ways to get in contact with these people.”

“Yes, but …” the client says.

“Why can’t my parents just get it?” they say. “The only thing you can control is yourself,” I respond.

“Yes, but …” the client says.

Yes, therapists are supposed to be compassionate, but we’re also not supposed to enable unhealthy behaviors. If a clients steps into a mosquito-infested swamp and gets bit thousands of times and then refuses to get out, what should a therapist say? It’s dysfunctional to complain over and over about ongoing situations without taking healthy action. Eventually I’m likely to tell a client the second or third time they complain about the same thing is if they aren’t going to do anything about it then we need to move on and talk about something else.

So, here’s the basic concept of boundaries …

Boundaries are a security system for human beings to protect themselves. Not only does setting solid boundaries protect us from all types of human invasion, they also restrain us from becoming invaders ourselves. If you come over to my house and I pick up your purse and start going through it, I failed to restrain myself, right?

Boundaries involve our physical and sexual selves, having to do with our bodies, but also our psychological selves … what we think, feel, and do. Children are born with no ability to protect themselves and it’s a parent’s job to teach a child how to live in a world of other people so that we can all get along. Most parents fail miserably at this, and so most of us grow up with either no ability to protect ourselves, so we get stomped on repeatedly, or we have no ability to restrain ourselves, and one becomes the victim of the other.

The job of a parent is to raise a confident child who will grow up to be independent and be able to take care of themselves. Once that is achieved, parenting in the form of unsolicited suggestions, advice, judgment, and control are no longer needed, and almost never desired. Therefore, at some point, a parent needs to change their approach from protecting, guiding, and nurturing to a loving, caring, support that stands by if needed. In the end, no adult has a right to involve themselves in another adult’s life unless requested.

If that isn’t clear enough, I put together a list of specific rules for parents of adults to follow.

The Ten Commandments of Parenting an Adult Child

1. No interfering in your adult children’s weddings, parties, decisions, or anything else.

2. No social media posting about your kids or grandkids without the parent’s agreement.

3. No unsolicited advice on housekeeping, child raising or anything else.

4. No parenting of adult kids who are self-supporting. Instead adopt an attitude of a caring support who stands by to help if requested. Keep criticism of your child, daughter or son-in-law to yourself.

5. Let your kids be who they were born to be. Don’t mold, pressure, judge.

6. Don’t use money, property, inheritance to control your adult children.

7. Don’t call doctors and therapists to make appointments for your grown kids.

8. Allow your kids the leeway to visit or not. Don’t guilt or pressure them into doing what you want them to do.

9. Mind your own business. Ask if you may help, and if your adult child says no, stand back.

If this doesn’t motivate more parents of adult children to create the space for their kids to have their own lives in their own way, then maybe they’ll understand when the children begin to lessen or not include them in their lives at all. That’s typically what happens when we don’t respect another adult’s boundaries.

Becky Whetstone writes under her maiden name. Her legal name Is Becky Whetstone Cheairs. She is a Marriage and Family Therapist who does therapy in Arkansas and Texas, and life coaching around the world. She is just completing a book, writes a blog, and makes self help videos alone and with her daughter on the Call Your Mother channel on You Tube. Find Doctor Becky on her web site at www.DoctorBecky.com.