Do you struggle to set boundaries with your children?

Learning to be the kind of parent my children needed at different stages in their lives has been a struggle for me. I knew my children would grow but I had no knowledge of the fact that I was going to need to grow with them and learn to be a different parent at each stage. As you can guess having 5 children of different ages and at different stages was somewhat a chaotic juggling act as I tried to parent in a style that was helpful at each stage for each of them. I have no doubts I failed and succeeded, I hope,in equal measure.

A book I found that helped me most when my children were teenagers, though it could have possibly helped when they were younger, is 'Setting Boundaries with your adult children by Allison Bottke'. I am not a religious person and this book talks about God a lot, but I felt I could change that for whatever I choose personally. This did not impact on how helpful I found the material that Allison sets out, especially when it comes to thinking about who is responsible, when they are responsible and for what.

Boundaries are such an important need for us all. Enabling us to know what we want to say yes to, what we want to say no to and being able to choose when or if we do other than we want to. I believe learning to set firmer boundaries through discussion were helped enormously after I read this book. Boundary setting isn't easy and sometimes we just want a quiet life but in my experience once the boundaries are set and the dust settles, life became much easier for all of us.