Parent Affirmation Monday- Boundaries 7/16/2012
Written by Kate Oliver, LCSW-C
Boundaries are tough for a lot of people, especially if they were not always honored for you while you were growing up in your family of origin. They are also ever- changing. The boundaries you have with your two-year old will be very different from those you have with your teenager. Extenuating family circumstances and developmental issues can also play a major role in the boundaries we set with our children.
What I would like for each parent to take a moment to do this week is to really think about how your child will have many, many adults go in and out of their lives, but very few parents. Your role is so special and unique for your child. They look to you to show them the way to be in the world. They want you to guide them and teach them how to feel peaceful and happy. While it can seem like helping kids feel peaceful and happy means giving them free rein to explore, do and receive as they wish, children actually seek and need you to set reasonable limits for them.
You can see how important boundaries are when you look at children who seem to get all they want. Watch the children you know in your lives that get the toys right when they want them and whose parents take them anywhere they want to go. They are often the most demanding, unhappy children you will see. Parents that fool themselves into thinking that they must meet all of their children’s desires in order to make them happy are actually breeding unhappiness in their children along with a search for more and more and the message that the issues inside can be resolved by “getting something” from the outside. When children feel as though they are safely contained within the confines of a parental relationship where their parents are allowing them to explore in a way that is safe, and where they have limits, they feel better!
The affirmation for this week is:
I maintain healthy boundaries with my children.
Related articles
- Healthy Boundaries: A Good Practice (letlifeinpractices.com)
- Let Them Climb Trees (and Fall) (parenting.blogs.nytimes.com)
- The Benefits of Establishing Boundaries (rhachellenicol.com)
- Monday is Parent Affirmation Day at Help 4 Your Family! 7/9/2012
About me
Kate Oliver, LCSW-C (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) has been a clinician working with traumatized and attachment-disturbed children for almost two decades. She is co-owner of A Healing Place, a private practice in Columbia, Maryland, since 2007.
At the beginning of her career, Kate found that while some children responded to traditional child therapy practices, there were a significant number of children who showed little or no improvement in their overall emotional well-being. This led her to seek out specialized training to learn more about attachment, the bond between parents and children, and found that by using attachment-based strategies in addition to treating trauma, even the most challenging children and their parents, saw major, life-changing shifts, not only for the children she was working with, but the parents as well.
Early in her career, Kate was privileged to work as the clinical director for Tamar’s Children, a program that took pregnant, incarcerated women from prison to a treatment facility that worked on teaching the women to bond with and attach to their babies, while also helping the women to heal their own broken attachments, and history of trauma and addiction. This program was internationally recognized for having a successful, evidence-based practice using an attachment-based model. From working with some of the most severely disenfranchised parents, Kate received important information about how to help all parents maintain a happy, healthy relationship with their children.
In 2007, Kate co-founded A Healing Place, a mental health private group practice in Columbia, Maryland, where she focuses on working with families with children who have a history of trauma and/or attachment disturbances. A board certified supervisor, Kate has been an invited presenter to teach continuing education courses for other social workers and psychologists. In her courses, Kate teaches attachment-building techniques and presents about her sub-specialty, working with families headed by gay and lesbian parents. Kate has also worked as a trainer for Building Families for Children, a therapeutic foster care agency.
Kate is a former board member for the organization COLAGE, a non-profit group that works toward community building for people with gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgender parents. She is currently a member of Attachment Disorders Maryland, a group that works to educate parents and professionals about working with children with attachment related issues. She is a Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) Practitioner and Educator.
Kate lives in Columbia, Maryland is the mother of two amazing daughters, the partner to a fantastic husband, and the daughter of one mother and two gay dads. She loves to read any book that crosses her path, write (of course), and she recently started dancing again, a passion she has had since her youth.
Kate can be reached by email: helpforyourfamily@gmail.com for questions or you can find her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/Help4yourfamily.
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