Failure to develop healthy boundaries and lack of healthy parental love : insights from Cloud and Townsend.

Those of us who were not completely loved and understood in childhood are naturally going to struggle developing healthy boundaries in later life. It is an issue addressed in Chapter 4 of Dr Henry Cloud, and Dr John Townsend’s book Boundaries : When To Say YES, When to Say NO To Take Control of Your Life. We need safe relationships in our lives to be able to express and enforce healthy boundaries since the threat of loss of love may be too overwhelming for some of us with severe anxious attachment.

Don’t even try to start setting limits until you have entered into deep, abiding attachments with people who will love you no matter what. Our deepest need is to belong, to be in a relationship, to have a spiritual and emotional “home”. Love means relationship – the caring committed connection of one individual with another.

The are three stages of boundary development that occur in childhood : Separation/Individuation, Hatching and Rapproachment. In each stage which begin to occur around the age of 18 months to two years the child needs the consistent understanding and love of a parent who will not only try to impose its own will upon the developing child. There are times the child needs to have ownership of its own life and say its essential ‘No’, even if this appears to be selfish. There is a time when parents can gently and powerfully set out the need for sharing with a young child, but only after he or she has learned the power of their own healthy ‘No.”

Today I listened to a very interesting video by Teal Swan on relationships which I will embed at the end of this post. It was about unhealthy relationships demanding suffering and self sacrifice. There are times we need to sacrifice our own needs to be there for others but not at the expend of our own individuation.

A parent that will not allow its child legitimate anger and ownership will set them up for grief and co-dependency in later life. The following excerpts are taken from Cloud and Townsend’s book :

Anger is a friend. It was created by God for a purpose: to tell us that there’s a problem that needs to be confronted. Anger is a way for children to know that their experience is different from someone else’s. The ability to use anger to distinguish between self and others is a boundary. Children who can appropriately express anger are children who will understand, later in life, when someone is trying to control or hurt them.

Ownership. Sometimes misunderstood as simply a ‘selfish’ stage, rapproachment introduces words to the youngster’s vocabulary such as mine, my and me. (it is not evidence of a sinful nature at all because ownership is a natural thing we all require), e.g ownership over our time, energy, talents, values, feelings, behaviour, money, and … (other things). Without a ‘mine’, we have no self to give….

Children desperately need to know that mine, my and me aren’t swear words… until children .. have a personality that has been loved enough (they will not be able to).. give love away.

The word No is the first powerful word learned during rapproachment which :

helps them to separate from what they don’t like. It gives them power to make choices. It protects them. Learning to deal with a child’s no is crucial to that child’s development. Parents… need to help their child feel safe enough to say no, thereby encouraging him or her own boundaries..Informed parents won’t be insulted or enraged by their child’s resistance. They will help the child to feel that his or her no is just as lovable as his yes. They won’t withdraw emotionally when a child says no, but will stay connected.

At the same time

Parents need to help the child respect other’s boundaries…. to take a no.

Ideally by age three the child should be able to do three things.

1. be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one’s freedom to be apart.

2. have the ability to say appropriate ‘no’s’ to others without fear of a loss of love.

3. have the ability to take appropriate no’s from others without withdrawing emotionally.

As the authors point out some of us still haven’t developed these ‘abilities’ at age 43 or even 53.

Boundaries continue to hit important additional developmental stages in adolescence and young adult hood as we prepare to embark out into the world and make other separations from home, parents, peers and family. According to Cloud and Townsend

The earlier a child learns good boundaries the less turmoil he or she experiences in later inlife. A successful first three years of life will mean a smoother (but not smooth) adolescence and a better transition into adulthood. A problematic childhood can be helped greatly by lots of hard work in the family during adolescence. But serious boundary problems during both these periods can be devasating during the adult years.

Boundary injuries and traumas as many of us have experienced can leave deep wounds and scars that appear well into our later life. Traumas to boundaries provides the final part of this chapter and I will share that in an upcoming post.