Boundaries Blog

You have never received a winner's trophy before playing in the championship game. You have never been offered a promotion before you excelled in your job. Your parents never instructed you to make sure you ate your dessert first and not worry about the vegetables, since they would take care of themselves.

Why did none of these things happen? Because that's not how successful lives work. It makes no sense to earn trophies before you win games, get a promotion before you perform well, or eat sweets before you consume your dinner. An attitude of entitlement, though, tells us that it can and should be this way: "You can have it all. Do what is easy and comfortable first, and you'll be rewarded with a lot of amazing things."

It's a lie....

When some individuals begin to develop boundaries, they say, "But my mother (or father, or sister, or brother) is my best friend." They often feel fortunate that, in times of family stress, their best friends are the family in which they were raised. They don't think they need an intimate circle of friends besides their own parents and siblings.

They misunderstand the biblical function of the family....

As you navigate through life together, you’ll have ample opportunities to offer your child natural consequences when they cross a boundary or make a poor choice. For instance, you and your kid may agree that he can do his chores on the weekend, as long as they’re all done by bedtime on Sunday. If Sunday night comes and his chores aren’t done, the next weekend he’ll need to complete them before doing anything else on Friday night.

If you’ve mapped this out ahead of time, this won’t be a surprise because the two of you will have already agreed on consequences if he didn’t follow through....

I (Dr. Cloud) was talking to a young man one day about his girlfriend. He was thinking about getting married, and he had questions about their relationship. Several times during the conversation, he said that something she did or something about the relationship did not "make him happy." It was clear that this was a theme for him. She was not "making him happy."

When I asked, he said that she wanted him to deal with some things in the relationship. He needed to do some work that took effort. It was not a "happy" time. When he had to work on the relationship, he no longer liked it....

When my sons were small, they often argued and fought. Their disagreements erupted for any number of reasons, and sometimes, the best strategy seemed to be to separate them for a period of time. When it appeared that they had learned a lesson and could once again play well, I let them get together again.

You would expect that the mean one would want to reconnect and reconcile sooner than the hurt one. But that was not the pattern; there was no pattern. Both boys always wanted to get back together and play after approximately the same amount of time had passed....