Family Boundaries - Intrusive Parents

As mentioned in my last blog, Allison and i were talking about common "boundary busting" behaviours of parents. The second behaviour Allison highlighted was about being intrusive.

Intrusiveness includes such behaviours as entering a room without the courtesy of knocking especially an older child or teenager. Not respecting their right to privacy and being interrupted. Reading a child's diary or checking up on their MSN messages is invading their privacy. Yes you can be concerned but if you have ahd an open dialogue and worked with them over the years then you probably don't need to be intrusive and violate their trust.

Too often I feel children are not given the respect that we accord adults yet adults expect and even demand respect from them.

Allison gave an example of a hypothetical situation in which a mother decides to clean up her son's room and collect his old toys and clothes for a garage sale. When he comes home to find his room stripped of some of his things the response is that she thought that he wouldn't mind and she took it upon herself to "clean up" his space.

We discussed the message or lesson for this boy. What he has learned that it is okay for people to take the liberty to take other people's things. Allison mentioned that something the boy may also learn is that it is alright for him to go into his mother's purse and take money because "she doesn't need it."

Whatever we do in a consistent manner whether it is using controlling behaviour as I blogged last time or being intrusive, we are sending out underlying messages to and lessons for our children. We set the bar and our behaviour is the standard to which our children aspire. We need to watch the boundaries and clearly respect them if we expect reciprocal behaviours from our children.

The next "boundary buster" of parents is over-protection.

For more on this, tune into Island Parent Radio on Village 900, on Sunday morning (June 10th) at 9 am (PST) and hear our complete discussion.