This is the fifth of a multi-part series that examines the workings of a healthy family. It’s meant to be a sort of how-to guide that can help you create the family you always dreamed of.

The Four Foundation Stones

Boundaries

In every family three different kinds of boundaries should be operating at all times:  the boundary around the family itself; the boundary that separates the parents from the kids; and the boundary that separates each individual from each other. Boundaries are there to keep the system and subsystems intact and protected from outside threats.

The vital but invisible boundary that separates the family from the larger world allows family members to know who belongs and who doesn’t. In a family with a good, semi-permeable boundary, members feel free to step out and participate in the world without losing their sense of security and belonging.

Think about the doors and windows of a house. When they are closed, the boundaries are intact and the family is safe and secure within. Add some screens and you can now get fresh air and good circulation but still have a boundary that protects you from flies, mosquitoes and random people walking in. When night falls or it’s rainy or cold, you can shut the windows and doors until conditions improve. The doors, windows and screens create a boundary that is semi-permeable.

If the boundary around the family is rigid, it’s like the windows and doors are locked or nailed shut. There is no way for fresh air or the sounds of the outside world to come through. And there is no chance for people to come or go without some difficulty.

Rigidity in a family boundary often develops when serious problems like alcoholism, mental illness or abuse are present. In these cases it becomes difficult for members who may be suffering to ask for outside help because a strict “Don’t talk about our problems to anyone outside of the family” rule is operating.

On the other hand, if the boundary is too loose it may be hard to maintain any kind of structure or stability at all because of the constant or unpredictable stream of people coming and going. Part of the reason that a boundary exists in a family is to clarify its membership, which must be intact in order for the structure to develop well. Without it, chaos will reign.

When I was working in Foster Care, I once visited a family on the verge of losing custody of their children. The first thing I noticed was that the front door was missing. Snow was blowing in and anyone could just walk in, day or night so everyone who lived there was constantly exposed to danger. Life in this family was extremely chaotic and the missing door proved to be a very powerful metaphor for what turned out to be a lack of any boundaries at all in this very troubled family.

An interpersonal boundary between individuals also exists in families. This boundary allows each person to feel entitled to having her own thoughts, feelings and personal space while still knowing she can reach out for comfort, information or emotional support when needed.  If a child starts crying or yelling, for example, the parent shouldn’t automatically assume she knows why, although she might have a good idea.

In order to respect that boundary, she should start by asking the child what’s going on and giving him a chance to tell her before rushing in with some kind of reaction. In other words, a good interpersonal boundary helps keep assumptions and mind reading to a minimum. Before jumping to conclusions about what someone might be thinking or feeling, family members who respect interpersonal boundaries take the time to check in with each other and ask first.

When these boundaries are too loose, people tend to be over-involved in each other’s lives and overly reactive to each other’s behavior. Family members may feel that they have no privacy or the priveledge of keeping some things to themselves. A parent might flip out if one of the kids doesn’t get invited to a party or gets cut from a team. Interpersonal boundaries are so loose that it gets hard to tell who actually suffered the loss—the kid or the parent. In extreme cases, a lack of interpersonal boundaries can lead to physical or emotional abuse or even incest.

Parents start to help their children learn about this important boundary early on by giving instructions like, “Keep your hands to yourself,” or “Mind your own business.” On the other hand, when interpersonal boundaries are too rigid, it’s hard to get anyone to care or get involved with helping at all. Individual family members are caught up in their own worlds and have a hard time connecting with each other emotionally. When this is the case, you might see problems like emotional or physical neglect.

At certain times during a family’s life, this interpersonal boundary is necessarily looser or stronger. During infancy for example, a mother often feels like there is no boundary at all between herself and her baby. She spends a tremendous amount of time literally attached to her child as she goes through the routines of feeding, burping and holding.

The parents are appropriately deeply tuned in to every sound and movement that baby makes and often know when he is about to start crying minutes before he makes a sound. But as the child grows, he starts spending more time in his crib or being held, fed, and played with by others. The individual boundary between mother and child begins to form.

During adolescence, teenagers begin to spend more time in their rooms away from their parents. They’re working on finding out who they are and establishing an identity for themselves that is separate from their family. It’s totally normal but every parent feels a little left out at first.

The boundary is being renegotiated and it’s confusing. If you only have one child, you may take it personally for a long time. But if you have more than one, by the time the second or third child starts isolating himself you know it’s just a part of their development and you don’t worry. A lot of parenting is like this—kind of a bad joke really. By the time you figure out what’s going on, you’ve moved to the next stage and you don’t get to show off how skillful you’ve become at handling it all. So annoying!

Next Week: Part VI, The Four Foundation Stones, Hierarchy

This is the third of a multi-part series that examines the workings of a healthy family. It’s meant to be a sort of how-to guide that can help you create the family you always dreamed of!

Family Blueprints

Some people were lucky enough to grow up in families where the structure was sound and the rules of operation were clear and made sense.

They received a lot of first hand experience in how to share power, talk about a problem, cooperate, discipline a child, deal with stress, negotiate an important decision, or lay down the law without being tyrannical. And they will probably incorporate a lot of those customs, or ways of doing business, into their own families once they become adults.

But for all the others who experienced a less than ideal family life growing up, creating a strong, resilient family structure can be tougher. The set of instructions they received may be intrinsically flawed and they might not even realize how. As the old poem goes, “Children learn what they live,” and we all learned a lot about how to be in a family based on the one we grew up in. Much of it happened through osmosis though, so we might not know what we know and are shocked when the same old family problems that plagued us in our youth show up again in the new family we are trying to build.

Since most people eventually have children, it seems that a basic course or two on child and family development should be offered in every high school, right? I mean after all, we’re primates, so when it comes to raising children, we have to learn everything. We are just as clueless as a gorilla or a chimpanzee when it comes to child rearing. New gorilla parents get shown the ropes by older gorillas. They get a lot of hands-on training from the pros. Without the guidance and attention of many gorilla aunties, a new mother might leave her baby up a tree or never get the hang of nursing. We are no different. But rarely in our culture does anyone in the know explain how to grow a healthy family. So good or bad, we are left with the model we grew up with.

When I was working as a family therapist, I used to think about that all the time. It seemed so odd to me that the only people who got to learn the basics about how “normal” families develop and operate were the ones in treatment, who were burned out and on the brink of disaster. Even then though, with so much stacked against them, it was amazing how often they were able to make structural changes that led to great improvement for one and all.

Imagine for a moment trying to run a retail company if you didn’t have a structure or a plan—if you didn’t know who was in charge, what to order or how much to charge, when the store should be open or what the competition was up to. It wouldn’t matter how enthusiastic you were or whether running a company was something you had always wanted to do. If you didn’t have a basic, sound understanding of what a business like this needed in order to succeed, chances are you’d be filing for bankruptcy before most of your neighbors even knew you had a store.

When you make the decision to raise children, you are in a sense traveling down that same path. You are opening up a “family” business. So you need to know how to set up shop. You need a business plan. You need to understand the basic concepts that must be present and in good working order if you even want a shot at creating and maintaining the happy family we all dream about. Don’t get me wrong though—there is no magic formula here. Obviously all families will run into problems and difficulties—mild or severe—throughout their lifespan. But the ones with a strong, healthy structure tend to fall less often and recover more quickly when they do.

Next Week, Part IV: We Are Family

Parts I and II can be found in the MamaToMama Blog.

This is the first of a multi-part series that examines the workings of a healthy family. It’s meant to be a sort of how-to guide that can help you create the family you always dreamed of.

Introduction

They say Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. One for flakes that are wet and slushy and another for those that are dry and powdery. There’s a word to describe the stuff that falls fast and hard and another for the snowflakes that fall softly and silently to the ground. Since it blankets their landscape for most of the year and is such an integral part of their day-to-day life, they are quick to recognize the subtle distinctions that you and I might miss. But at the end of the day, regardless of the specific type, snow is snow and Eskimo or not, you know it when you see it.

 Same thing with families. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, too and include everything from the traditional, straight, married, two-parent kind to the one headed by a gay, single, adoptive parent. But just as all the different kinds of snow share characteristics that make it snow instead of rain, families share certain characteristics that distinguish them from a club or a mere houseful of roommates.

And if you look a little closer, you can’t help but notice that some families seem to hum along while others tend to lurch from one crisis to the next. But why? Is it luck? Magic? Good karma? Are some families just destined for success while others are doomed to fail? Or is there some kind of matrix that can be developed in every family that will help them grow strong, steady and better able to weather the lifelong challenges that inevitably arise?

The good news is that there are definite, essential elements that all families need in order to thrive. These elements can be seen, known and understood and every family can work to incorporate them. There is a rhyme and a reason for why some families operate well, regardless of their composition, while others, despite the best intentions of everyone involved, fail again and again.

The key lies in understanding the nature and function of the family structure, its unique life cycle, and its specific stages of growth and development. Before we can really understand the reasons why some parenting styles don’t work, it’s important to figure out what does work and why.

 So what exactly are those essential elements that help families flourish? To begin with, all families, from Mr. Rodgers’ to Osama Bin Laden’s, have a structure, a way of existing and operating in the world that’s unique to them. Sort of the way a house—with its walls, roof, floors, and windows—has a structure that optimally allows for safe, comfortable living.

But besides the brown shingles, wood frame and brick chimney, there’s a separate network of systems operating behind the walls that bring that house to life. The “guts” of the house—the heating and cooling systems, the wiring and plumbing—work with the more visible parts to make it functional and pleasant to be in.

Whether a house is a tiny, cozy duplex in the heart of the city or a storybook mansion high atop a tree-covered, suburban hill, a home inspector goes through the same basic list when he assesses its soundness. If termites have made a meal of the front porch, or the wiring is shot, or the pipes have corroded and no longer bring water in, then the people who live there will have to make some improvements before they can call it “home sweet home.”

Families are like that, too. On the outside, there’s the typical cast of characters involving some combination of parents and kids that everyone can see. But what makes each family a one-of-a-kind is partly based on the slew of operating instructions that have evolved within it over time.

Every family has a chain of command, for example, a way of getting things done and making decisions and a whole set of rules, some spoken and some implied, that dictate everything from when it’s okay to cry to who takes out the garbage. There are also boundaries that surround and protect the family as a whole and each individual and subgroup within it. All of these invisible elements form the family structure and work together to make it strong and healthy or weak and prone to problems.

Strangely enough, this structure is usually set in place without any deliberate planning by anyone involved. Somehow a hierarchy develops, rules are established, and family members take on a variety of roles and responsibilities that go along with them.

Before you know it, certain decisions have been made: Saturdays are for grocery shopping, paying bills and hanging out; the oldest child takes the dog out every night at 9:00; you can leave the bathroom door partly open when you’re using it, unless company is over; Mom pays the department store bills and Dad pays the mortgage and utilities; arguments can get loud but never physical; family vacations happen with your brother and sister-in-law except for “February Break,” which is when you visit the grandparents in Florida; a teen’s 11:30 P.M. curfew is really a 12:00 curfew; no one talks about Uncle Steve’s drinking problem; serious discipline is doled out by Mom, Dad is the pushover; medical problems are never discussed with anyone outside the family except Mom’s best friend Julia; any grade below a B results in a “talk”; and when Mom gives you “that look” the discussion, whatever it is, is over.

The result is the emergence of a unique family system with it’s own distinctive language, culture and set of instructions. But unique does not necessarily mean good. Without some careful thought and discussion, the structure that appears might be more Jerry Springer than Walt Disney.

Next Week, Part II: Connecting the Dots

What on earth is affluenza? Is it contagious? Is it serious? Well according to PBS, which coined the term and produced an hour-long television show about it, affluenza can be defined as: “1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream.”

Basically, it’s an addiction to materialism — the overwhelming desire for more, more, more.

But what does that have to do with my kid, you might ask? He’s only three-years-old and more concerned with pursuing the household dog than dogmatically pursuing anything else. Career ambitions? Short-term, we’re shooting for total success in the potty training field and long-term, we’re possibly looking at something involving fire engines.

I know, but it actually does have a lot to do with your kid, and every kid, for that matter. It doesn’t just affect adults. Kids are suffering from it, too — in a big way — and yes, it is serious and highly contagious.

Just pair the affluenza idea with a recent study from San Diego State University and you’ll understand what I mean. Incredibly, they found that the number of teens suffering from anxiety and depression today is five times higher than it was during the Great Depression. Did you get that? And according to an article from Connect With Kids, the experts are pointing to affluenza as a major reason why.

That statistic took my breath away and it should get your attention too, because the trends that appear in the teen set today usually stick around for awhile and then eventually hit the pre-school set a few years later. The patterns and expectations you set up with your children now, while they are little, will last for a long time.

When we launched  this website, we promised to warn you about the inevitable potholes that appear when you least expect them, and hopefully save you some trouble. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, with little ones running around but as a mom and a family therapist, I’m urging you to pay attention, because this is a big one.

So here’s the low-down on this prevalent and frightening virus: what it looks like like, how it gets passed around, and how you can prevent your child from becoming its next victim.

SYMPTOMS:

Many of the kids who were questioned in the study  (regardless of family income), said they needed the latest ipod, iphone, sports car, designer handbag, or $200.00 pair of jeans in order to feel comfortable and “good enough”  about themselves. Several reported buying something they wanted and then lying about its cost to a parent.

They knew they had crossed an important line regarding trust. But with affluenza, one’s sense of self worth gets linked to their possessions. What they own becomes the mark of who they are. Their accomplishments, ideals, families, talents or dreams for the future are not nearly as important as their “things” in determining how they see themselves.

The symptoms present as an obsession with shopping, or constantly comparing what they have with what their friends have. It’s a disease marked by competitiveness and their perception of “personal lack” can result in feelings of shame, anxiety, depression or unworthiness.

This is not, counter to what you might think, an exclusively upper-class disease. Kids from all racial and socioeconomic groups are affected.

CONTAGABILITY:

This one gets passed around very easily and often gets its start at home. Parents beware! Take a step back and look at how you spend money and family resources. Do your purchases tend to be needs or wants? We all like to indulge ourselves once-in-awhile, but a picture is worth a thousand words and guess which one they’re looking at?

They are certainly going to pick up on the behaviors and norms of their buddies in the neighborhood and at school. But that makes it even more important to make sure that at home, you practice what you preach.

TREATMENT:

Affluenza can be successfully treated. The first step is to spot it and call it for what it is. The rest is based on good, old fashioned follow-through. So here’s the plan:

1. Slow down on all the presents. Save them for birthdays and Christmas or Hanukkah. And even then, keep it modest. In a previous article, I mentioned that a large research study had found that 73% (yes, 3 out of 4) of the stuff parents bought their kids were things that the children hadn’t even asked for. The parents bought the stuff simply because they thought their kid might like it. Don’t go there. It can create an addiction and the story of the overindulged child does not end well. The kids in that study grew up deeply resenting their parents, and vowed not to spoil their own children when they became parents.

2. Set limits. If your child does want something, help him figure out how to either wait for it (“Put it on your Christmas list”); save up for it (remember the lay-away plan?); work for it; or forget about it. Remind him that just because he wants something doesn’t mean he gets to have it. And then, stick to your guns.

3. Hold off on giving them their own credit card until they are mature enough to handle it. Many of the kids in the San Diego study had them and spent over their limit on a regular basis. Unless you plan to fund them for the rest of their lives, you had best avoid that trap. That’s not to say they can’t have a credit card when they go to college for books, emergencies etc., but make sure you check it carefully each month and hold them accountable for any unauthorized purchases. And if they abuse it, cancel it.

4. Get them involved in giving back in one way or another. Volunteering in their community or school is a good way to start. This can start very young, with you!

PREVENTION:

There is no vaccine but there is hope. You are their best shot at prevention. And you can make all the difference. How?

1. Family dinnertime. Once again, it comes up as an antidote. Start right away with this habit and keep it going. Make it a priority to eat together at least 4 or 5 times per week. The research is crystal clear in demonstrating the positive effect on behavior, self-esteem, and overall happiness in children.

2. Spend time with your child playing, talking, and goofing around. Institute Family Game Night and “Special Time” and keep it going. The more quality time they spend with you away from the television and computer, the more confident they will feel about themselves.

3. Encourage them to develop their imaginations and become good at something creative that they enjoy. Something, not a hundred things. Maybe it’s music, or art, or fishing, or rock polishing. Just make sure it’s truly something that they like and don’t go overboard with lessons or teachers. Just give them encouragement and opportunity, and help them to develop their hobby or talent over time.

4. Make a pact with your friends to tone down the birthday parties and limit the excess when it comes to bigger and better. Work with your nursery school or P.T.A. to keep it simple when it comes to holiday parties or celebrations at school. And ask any well-meaning but notoriously overindulging grandparents, aunts, uncles or friends not to go overboard on a regular basis.

You can do this. I hope you’ll try. If you need a little more inspiration, keep in mind the wise words of Frank A. Clark: “A child, like your stomach, doesn’t need all you can afford to give it.” Now that’s something to chew on.

“Keeping the lines of communication open is a critical part of good parenting.”

Duhhhh! Already knew that. Who on the planet doesn’t? It’s obvious, right? And there’s probably not a mom or dad out there who wouldn’t comply, if they only knew how.

Instead of simply doling out lofty platitudes like that, with no explanations attached, it would be ever so much better if the “experts” would walk us through exactly HOW to accomplish so noble a feat, because once the pre-teen freeze-out begins, it can be pretty tough to break the ice.

So for all of you out there who might be wondering how to keep those kids talking, here are some tried and true tricks to start thinking about now, while they are still small and more than happy to talk your ears off.

• Play lots of board games and cards with them when they are little (CandyLand, Sorry, Go Fish, Old Maid, etc.) to get them used to the idea of hanging out and talking. Later, when they are not so inclined to want to spend time with the ‘rents, the groundwork for a comfortable way to connect has already been laid and they will be more likely to want to wade in. 

I’m talking old-school, non-electronic stuff here. Why? Because the pace is slower, you can stop at any time to chew the fat about this-and-that and there is way less visual and auditory stimulation to distract them. Once they hit the teen years, they will love to play endless games of Monopoly, Risk, or Scrabble with the family IF it is already something you guys do together. 

Lots of random stuff comes up during these games and it creates a great, playful climate for you to share. Knowing there will be no lectures or questions about why they didn’t do better on their latest history test will help them loosen up and kid around with you which will ultimately strengthen your relationship. Plus, it will give you the chance to create new, positive memories together. If you make some hot chocolate and popcorn to go with it all, you will really up your odds for success.

• As kids begin to age into the double digits, their attention starts to shift to people outside of their own house. Normal.

 If you pay close attention to when this natural transition time starts, you can take advantage of it. How? Start asking lots of light, non-threatening questions about their friends and their friend’s families so you can keep track of who and what matters to them.

And get to know their buddies. By establishing real relationships with their friends early on, you’ll have another way into your mute-by-choice kid later through them. The friends are likely to become big fans of yours if you treat them well and later on will want to hang out in the kitchen with you and chat, especially if you have something hot and delicious for them to eat.

Your kid will have to hang out there, too, and you can milk the friend for the scoops on what’s happening at school and with other kids if you keep it light and lively. Once the info is out, it’s fair game to bring up later for further discussion, after the friend goes home. Just make sure you honor their willingness to speak openly by never holding anything that’s said during those conversations against them.

• Say a strong and powerful no to having T.V.’s, ipad’s or phones on in the car. Make your auto an unplugged, techno-free zone.

Why? Because it’s the one place where you can create and control privacy and space for things to bubble up naturally, especially when it’s just the two of you. It’s often there in the car where normally shut-off teens will let down their guard and spill their guts, so you want to be ready. 

One of the reasons kids are more likely to talk about feelings and problems in the car is that they don’t have to make eye contact. They know you have to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. And since they can look out their window away from you when they discuss touchy subjects or answer difficult questions, it’s less threatening. If you have snacks available for munching, you’re likely to do even better since teens love to eat.

• This “having something else to do while you’re talking” works outside the car, too. Don’t insist on always making them “Sit down and look at me, damn it!” if you want them to talk. Teens often need a certain level of distraction, or something to do with their hands like playing around with a YoYo or throwing a ball into the air in order to feel comfortable. They aren’t necessarily being disrespectful, just making themselves feel less exposed and reducing the intensity of the face-to-face talk.

• Know that teens are also more likely to want to talk late at night when it’s time for bed. When they are tired and worn down by the day, they often become more vulnerable and willing to let you in. So make sure you don’t hit the hay before they do, if at all possible. I know how exhausted moms are by days end but late at night seems to be the magic witching hour when the chance to really connect appears.

• Learn as much as you can about their hobbies or interests. If they are all about sports, as one of mine is, take the time to find out what’s going on with their team.

Shock them occasionally by asking questions like, “Can you believe the fill-in-the-blank’s traded fill-in-the-blank to the fill-in-the-blanks? What idiots! They should have let fill-in-the-blank go instead!” Your kid will look at you with new eyes and may let loose with all sorts of info on the team and what he thinks about it all. Nod your head knowingly as he speaks and compliment him on his brilliant analysis of whatever it is he is talking about even if it’s all Greek to you. If you can at least fake it for a few minutes, you’ve created another opening through which to connect.

• Find a television show or two that you can watch together. I watched the first couple seasons of American Idol with my youngest and that gave us tons to talk about for years. Another show that provided us with a fantastic platform for discussion about all sorts of teen-related issues was Friday Night Lights. My latest favorite is Leader of the Pack with Cesar Millan (I’m obsessed with that man) which I discovered when I was sick for a week with a bad virus. A show like that is fantastic to watch together, especially if you have a dog because it’s educational and entertaining.

•  Establish an annual camping trip or activity-based family vacation that they are expected to go on every year. Once away from their ‘hood and their buds they are often willing to be with you in a way they wouldn’t/couldn’t be if they were home. Nature-based is especially great because the lack of gadgets forces you to find new things to do together. This is GOOD!

• Search out funny, silly youtubes and make it a habit to share them with your teen. This single act can easily create a half hour or more of laughing and talking together as they show you their latest favorites, too. This back-and-forth youtube sharing will give you a serious peek into the kinds of things they are paying attention to and provide you with lots of fodder for future conversations.

• Try hard not to hold grudges or bring up dirty laundry from the past. Once it’s over, however awful it was, let it be over even if it still makes you mad. They desperately want you to think well of them and if you will be big enough to let bygones be bygones, they will love you all the more for it. And they will feel freer to do better and make positive changes because for a very long time, they will see themselves through your eyes.

• Remember that it’s not so much what you talk about as it is that you talk. Once you’ve got that down, the rest will come a lot easier.