Boundaries with Teens Quotes

“Understand that her desire to get away from you is normal. Accept that she is getting tired of your control, rules, and restrictions. Provide her with some positive and happy experiences at home. Work with her on establishing a reasonably happy and functional environment at home. Compromise when you can, love always, and be strict when you need to.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Be a supporter of your kid’s extra-family world, as long as that world is one that is reasonably safe and supports your own values and beliefs.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Being a parent of a teen can cure a person of narcissism. When your child was born, you were the center of her world. You were special to her. Now that she is an adolescent, you have become less central. No matter what you do, she continues to invest in the outside world more than she does in the home.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Teens are impulsive, self-centered, and irrational. They have outbursts of anger and disrespect, then in a few minutes, they swing back to love and compliance.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Some parents mistakenly view guilt as a sign that they care about their teen. But guilt is more about the parent, because guilt centers on the parent’s failures and badness rather than on the teen’s difficulty and hurt.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“You contain your teen’s feelings rather than react to, invalidate, or try to change those feelings. You avoid saying things like, “Aren’t you being dramatic here? It’s really not that bad. Cheer up; it will get better.” Your job is to be with your adolescent as he is.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Find people who will give you reality, people who aren’t black-and-white thinkers and who don’t pretend to have an answer for every problem.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“I need to be clear about this, because I don’t think I have been clear in the past, or I haven’t been very loving about it. But I want there to be no misunderstanding. I will not tolerate your ditching school and your drinking. It is definitely not okay in our house. Whether or not you agree with that, it is the rule in this home.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“I am on your side. I am not doing this because I’m mad, or want to punish you, or don’t care about you. I am doing this because I want your best.” You may not be feeling especially”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Anchor #1 Love: I Am on Your Side”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“your teen needs a process of time in which to let go of parental dependence and move into adult independence. This cannot be done instantly.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“What can you do? The answer isn’t trying harder, or using your will power. Instead, realize that you don’t have what you don’t have. You will need to get from the outside what you don’t possess on the inside. You need to do this for your kid, and for yourself as well. You may need to take a break from the fracas and say, “I’m getting worn out with this, but I want to finish it. I’ll get back to you.” Call a safe and sane friend and get your emotional tank filled, and then enter the ring again and resolve the issue.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“no matter how much you love your teen, you have a built-in limitation, and it is this: you can only parent to your own level of maturity.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“But some parents are conflict-phobic — they are uncomfortable and afraid of being the object of their teen’s wrath, and so they avoid setting the limits their teen needs. However, this teaches adolescents that if they throw a tantrum, they can get out of a limit.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“When your teen withdraws, take the initiative to go after him and try to reconnect. Teens sometimes don’t have the skills to pull themselves back into relationship, so they need their parents to help them. But while you are inviting your teen back into connection with you, keep your requirements and expectations intact.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“To resolve your fear of withdrawal of love, connect with other adults who will support, affirm, and encourage you,”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Some parents fear that if they set limits, their teen will distance and detach themselves and withdraw their love from them. This fear can cause these parents to avoid boundaries at all costs, and to do their best to keep their kid connected.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Remorse, the healthy alternative to guilt, centers on the other person. Remorse is an empathic concern for the pain that your teen feels. It is also solution oriented.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Guard rails get dinged up. But if they work well, they preserve the young lives that run up against them.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Because of all the developmental changes teens are going through, they often don’t have good control over their behavior, a clear sense of responsibility for their actions, or much self-discipline and structure. Instead, they often show disrespect of authority (as in Trevor’s case), impulsiveness, irresponsibility, misbehavior, and erratic behavior. They are, as the Bible describes it, “like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“Rewards are good things, but teens shouldn’t be rewarded for doing what is normally required in life. After all, adults don’t receive promotions for showing up to work on time or for avoiding jail time. Rewarding teens for doing what they should already be doing can result in their not being ready for the future. It can also contribute to an attitude of entitlement or to seeing themselves as superior to others.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens

“You are probably aware of your own tendencies to go along with your teen’s behavior, to not respond or confront because it’s too much trouble or because you don’t want the conflict. Then, out of the blue, something snaps inside you, and you come out swinging, yelling, threatening — doing whatever it takes for you to express your frustration. I look at this as the “ignore and zap” parenting style: putting up with inappropriate behaviors for too long, then blowing up. When you consider how much teens test their parents, it’s easy to understand the temptation to ignore and zap. However, even though most parents ignore and zap at times — myself included — this isn’t good parenting. It teaches the teen that love and limits don’t go together.”
― John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens