Boundaries

How are you communicating yours?

I find it truly fascinating how boundaries change as our children get older. Of course, they start off inside us where there are no boundaries. What we feel, they feel. They don’t have the cognitive powers to understand that mummy’s feelings are nothing to do with them, you might just be annoyed with your partner, your boss, your mum. You may be worrying about money or your job, whether your baby will be healthy, whether your partner will quit smoking before the birth and so on. But they download this worry, this anxiety and this unease. There are no boundaries.

Then as your baby is born and emerges into your world, boundaries are minimal because they depend on you totally. They are connected to you, even when they aren’t physically connected, and they pick up on your ‘energy’ or mood. Have you found that as you lie in bed wondering if they’ll be awake soon, they then wake up? It’s like they know. Because they do. They don’t want a boundary, they need you so any absence is potentially…