The Real Self-Care: When and How to Say No, Reclaim Your Time, and Yourself
The Boundaries Principle
It’s like clockwork. Butt hits toilet seat. “MOMMMMMMYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!” screeches from the other side of the door. I used to respond as if I were not half naked in a private moment: “Yes?” But now I holler, “I’m in the bathroom!” and tune out any attempts at dialogue (veteran move – always lock the door).
As the parenting years progress, I have realized how across ages and stages, my very presence is like a flame for my 3 little moths – irresistible if a flicker of my presence catches their attention. (As all hours attempting to “work” from home with them there have repeatedly proven, COVID.)
As I am a complete human being all on my own, and do not need the constant company of my children to be whole, I have had to figure out boundaries between us. How can I be the connected, available, supportive mother I value, while also being the rest of me? If there’s anything I’ve learned as a mother, it’s that being one can become all-consuming. If I let it. And for the sake of my wellness and being the kind of mother I want to be, I need boundaries.
This parent first parenting principle reclaims the fluffy concept of “self-care” that does not actually do the caring for ourselves that we need. For meaningful “self-care,” we need boundaries with our kids and parenting roles.
This blog post discusses how boundaries shift with seasons of parenting, offers several strategies, including permission to say “No” to our kids wanting time with us, and reassurance that we don't need to constantly be available to our kids physically and emotionally. In fact, these boundaries offer healthy role modeling for our children’s identity development, and can even help them build distress tolerance skills, which are important for their long-term emotional health.
Seasons of Parenting
In my first daughter’s first year, my mother-in-law gifted me the luxury of a massage. We orchestrated it carefully to fit in between nursing sessions, with a clear plan to minimize time apart from my infant. The masseuse’s generosity of extending the massage from an hour to 90 minutes, usually a dream come true, resulted in panic as my body’s relaxation turned to tension, and I mustered all the firmness within my polite nature to tell her I really had to be done. She insisted I had time, and I felt anxiety and panic course through me as if my survival (and/or my baby’s?) depended on physically connecting with my baby again.
“If I see myself as a whole person who must place boundaries around mothering, and they watch me do it, they will be better equipped when it’s their turn.”
I remember in the early years how my body physically met practically every need of theirs: literally growing them inside me, the constant nursing, holding them on my hip, them needing my chest to fall asleep upon and my hand to hold. I realized then why the parent-child bond feels so visceral, why separation after too-short maternity leaves could feel so painful, and why another baby’s cry in public would evoke a physical response from my body. The connection runs so deep, biologically and psychologically, even as it simultaneously can overwhelm and deplete us.
Although a sign of healthy bonding, this type of attachment in the first year must evolve. We cannot be baby-wearing our 10-year-olds. Human babies physically depend on us much longer than other species, as their big brains have a lot of development to do after birth before they can fend for themselves. But they can fend for themselves sooner than many of us allow them to do.
Fortunately for my deep need for separateness in the midst of equally deep connection, children do benefit from clear boundaries. As one prime example, we are not their friends, existing to be liked and developing alongside them. In our roles as parents, we are authority figures for good reason: we know better with our adult-sized brains. (For many things, much of the time, but an element of humility is also helpful to keep us open to learning from our children.)
As my own children are in the developmental period called “middle childhood,” with the eldest skirting “early adolescence” (dang it – make the growing up stop!), I am going to share some ways I have set boundaries that initially felt uncomfortable. With practice, though, they have become totally essential to not only my general well-being, but to living the array of values important to me, including following passions that require time apart from my children. The season of parenting after those early years opens up so much possibility now that their survival does not require constant supervision! Let the alone time begin!
Don’t Wait for the Day, Seize the Moment
When my children are harmoniously playing together after dinner (NOT a given), I seize the moment. I prioritize my own stress-management and self-fulfillment strategies and am ready to use them when I have a window of time, no matter how short. Some examples:
“I’m going to do a 15-minute meditation in my room. Nobody disturb me.” (They actually respect this, maybe after years of working up to it, they know I really mean it.)
Keep an escapist novel or mentally engaging nonfiction book at the ready so it’s right there to pick up and lose myself in for the 10-40 minutes I may have.
Go for a walk with a good podcast. If one of them asks to come with me, I decline, telling them that as much as I love our time together, I need this walk to be by myself.
If children are not harmoniously existing, tag-team with my co-parenting partner: communicate if one of us really needs a child-free hour to recalibrate, and return the favor another night.
When friends you value want to plan an outing, make it happen. If your children whine and cry and tug at your shirt and your heart, GO. Validate their feelings, give them a warm hug, assure them that other parent/caregiver will take great care of them, and GO.
Plan getaways with your partner, by yourself, or with a close friend or family member. Enlist trusted help, set the bar low for caregiving (keep them alive please!), book that place you’re not in charge of cleaning, and get a break, even for one night.
Your Emotional Needs Can Come First
As a psychologist, I have some nights when I’m especially emotionally taxed from my work. Practicing what I preach, I know my signs of emotional barrenness (irritability, fatigue, headache) and I prioritize my time and space to recover (made easier again, by being in my current season of parenting; I know this is harder with younger kids). If a child expresses needing me when I’m in this state, I have experimented with saying, “I need to rest for a bit, and I can chat later.” Popping out of the emotional waters with my children to dry off and relax, even briefly, helps me get back in to swim with more stamina and strength.
Distress Tolerance for All
Some children have more intense emotional lives than others. For those of us with emotionally intense children, parenting involves regular emotional heavy lifting. I’m here to say that it’s okay to take a break from it. If you are helping your child through 80% of their emotional times, for example (I do not have a scientifically based percentage, but you know what I mean), you can excuse yourself for the 20% when meeting their emotional needs may mire you deeper in your own.
Much of the current parenting guidance focuses on staying connected to our children, to focus on the closeness of our relationships for them to then be calmer and have fewer challenging behaviors. I wholeheartedly agree, but I think what’s often missing is the acknowledgment that it is not human to provide this for 100% of interactions. Nor is it necessarily good for them to have 100% reliance on us supporting them through a tough emotional moment.
For the post-preschooler age group, when we have established close, connected relationships with our children, we can also say: “I trust you know how to get through this problem even when I’m not available to help.” Because we have been teaching them for years, they have coping skills to use! Gently, lovingly remind them of that and then let them cope. On their own.
This actually helps them build what we know is central to strong psychological health, a fancy term called “distress tolerance.” This refers to the ability to confront and manage difficult emotions rather than numb out or run away from them, and is highly correlated with a lower risk of many psychological disorders. Looking to us to manage their strong emotions for them can be a sneaky form of running away from the emotions, or in other words, distress intolerance. In fact, we may have to manage our own distress tolerance by feeling the difficult feelings while watching our child struggle, or knowing they are struggling, instead of rescuing them.
Teens and Boundaries
I have known enough teenagers and worked with enough parents of teenagers to know this phase also brings about tricky boundary tests. As they separate more from us, I can totally see going into full Beverly Goldberg “sMother”mode (from cheesy, comfort food sitcom, The Goldbergs). As much as I craved escape in the physically claustrophobic young child years, I predict I will crave closeness when they do not want me next to them every second.
Based on data about historic dropouts during the first year of college, however, I am concerned that parents are not supporting their teens’ separation enough recently, leading to young adults unequipped for independent lives. During this developmental phase, it is critical for them to build private lives, increasing their confidence that they can manage what life throws at them, while knowing we are there when they need us.
Even when they do turn to us, however, we need to maintain boundaries around their personhood by not solving their problems. We should be asking questions to spur their critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making, like, “how are you thinking about this?” “What are your ideas for how to handle it?” “What do you think might happen if . . . “
Teens and their famous emotional outbursts (with good reason as their brain’s emotion center develops) also require emotional boundaries. Their emotions are not ours. We do not need to take them on, nor take them personally. Of course, we should have rules about how to treat each other, and enact boundaries of behavior, but the stronger our emotional boundaries, the more effective our responses (e.g., not escalating into regrettable, heated exchanges).
Benefits of Modeling Boundaries
My children frequently complain about how much I work. Side note: I have significantly more flexible work hours than when they were younger, and am substantially more available to them. But remember how their needs are bottomless if we let them be? Like need-me-every-time-I-pee bottomless? So, they complain, but I know it’s partly because they could have every moment of my time and still want more. I’m flattered.
However, when my 9-year-old celebrated that I signed a book deal, and cheered, “Mom, you’re making your dreams come true!” I know they can wish I devoted every minute to them, AND be proud to watch me pursue what matters to me. They may not fully realize it yet, but I also recognize how my actions model important values for them. When I tell them to work hard for what they want to do in their lives, I mean it because I did it too. If I see myself as a whole person who must place boundaries around mothering, and they watch me do it, they will be better equipped when it’s their turn.