How to Assert Your Own Needs With Your Child

Do you find it easy to provide warmth and support to your child, but have a hard time setting limits and holding boundaries? Do you feel like you have to do something your child is insisting upon, like you don't have any choice but to meet their demand? If you’re a parent who feels like you must constantly meet your kids’ needs at the expense of your own, then listen up.

As a parent, you may find it difficult to speak up when your children are behaving in ways that don't work for you. Do you tend to stop yourself from saying what is true to you out of fear that the other person will be hurt, or that they'll be dismissive or angry? You might feel that way because that actually happened when you were vulnerable with others. It could be that the adults you depended on as a child couldn't accept what you said as true for you. Perhaps they couldn't hear your feelings or concerns as mattering as much as their own. You might have concluded that your feelings must not actually matter. The good news is that with conscious effort, it's possible to start giving your needs some air time in your relationship with your own child.

When you understand parenting from a zero-sum perspective, it’s hard to believe that it’s unnecessary to coerce or bribe a child into obedience or compliance or that you don’t need to abandon your own needs just to keep the peace.

Before learning about respectful parenting, you might think there are only two ways to resolve conflicts with children: the adult "wins", or the child "wins," which means that someone always "loses." You might worry that if you don’t win, your child won’t behave appropriately in the future, will have all the power, or, ultimately, won't respect you. If you tend to be a "loser," you might be anxious that your child will have a meltdown if you don't give in to their demands.

When parents either make unilateral decisions or have difficulty identifying and/or asserting their own needs with their children, not only do someone’s needs go unmet, but children also miss out on practicing valuable relational skills. When you understand parenting from a zero-sum perspective, it’s hard to imagine that there's a win-win. But in fact, it’s unnecessary to coerce or bribe your child into obedience or compliance, and you don’t need to abandon your own needs just to keep the peace.

4 questions from parents learning to assert their needs

Here's how I have commonly responded to parents who have struggled to assert their personal boundaries with their children:

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