7 Boundaries Adult Children Should Consider Setting With Their Parents

Setting boundaries with your parents as an adult isn’t always easy. But it may be necessary for your own well-being and the health of the relationship.

Know that boundaries are for you. They’re a way to respect yourself and honor your needs. They’re not about controlling other people — in this case, your parents.

As Allison Hart, a psychological associate at Wellspace SF therapy practice, put it, boundaries “describe your behavior, what you will do or how you will be when someone crosses them.”

“A boundary is not telling someone they need to change,” she told HuffPost. “It’s changing your relationship to someone or their behavior” when their actions are compromising your wellbeing.

Adult children often worry that if they set boundaries, they might jeopardize their relationship with their parents.

“It’s a terrifying thought to lose our parents,” said Kate Stoddard, a marriage and family therapist at Wellspace SF. “However, what is lost from not trying to create a dynamic that is actually healthy? You may be living with this fear of loss, doing things out of guilt that you don’t want to do and then feeling resentful, or feeling controlled or beholden to others.”

We all have different circumstances, histories and current relationships with our parents, so keep that in mind when thinking about what boundaries to set and how to set them.

“It’s important to put any of these conversations into the context of your life and the full circumstances at play,” therapist Jor-El Caraballo, co-founder of the mental health and wellness practice Viva, told HuffPost.

If your parents are respectful, willing to listen and receptive to feedback, boundaries can be simple, loose guidelines. Other times, they may need to be more rigid, hard