Setting Boundaries
- Delia Gardner-Price
- May 18, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 5, 2021
Have you ever said yes so many times you forgot what you agreed to?
Or how about looking up after a dinner time/bath time/bedtime routine and realized that the crunch underfoot wasn’t your glasses (thankfully) but Cheerios?
The first time I realized I might be blurring the lines between being “Yi-Yi” and being me, I rolled over on a teething toy tucked under one of my pillows. That’s usually where my glasses or iPhone live, but at 7 a.m. this multicolored cube made its presence known...the hard way. The next time I thought about it, I was hopping in the car to head for a workout session with a friend and saw the car seat base and diaper bag in my back seat.
When did I start having a kid? Oh wait, I didn’t.
While I love being an auntie, I was watching with some annoyance as my car turned into a kid-mobile. With the shelter-in-place order, the only time I get alone time is on my drives down to Pacifica or in my room. I leave in my favorite air fresheners, my seat is set up the way I like, and I’m not worried about what I like to listen to corrupting Boop in the backseat. There’s nothing wrong with being a helpful sibling, but I needed to keep some space between me and Yi-Yi. If you’re also a live-in auntie, try some of these tips:
Journaling: Many times what is frustrating me or causing me to “jump bad” with my sister is a symptom of something deeper or something that happened earlier in the day. My current mantra is “It’s not about me, it’s about your reaction to me” but when that doesn’t work I grab a few minutes to journal in a note on my phone. This helps free the irritation from my brain until I can sit down at my physical journal and look at where I might need to speak up more or say less.
Breathe: Take a walk in your neighborhood and get outdoors, or just crack a window. In some cases, this isn’t possible because of the weather but fresh air or just stepping outside the door for a few minutes cools the head, figuratively and literally.
Speak Up: Talk with family and determine what responsibilities need to be handled by you, and what can be done by someone else. In the quest to help others, we can sometimes help ourselves out of the time and space we need to recharge. My sister is looking at doing a nanny-share so we can even out the responsibilities, but even if she doesn’t find anyone we’ve set some agreed-upon rules when it comes to household management and personal needs.
Family means a lot to me and so does maintaining my boundaries. Many of the lessons we learn as littles are modeled by the loved ones around us, so it‘s important for me to let my niece know it’s okay to set guidelines around how you want to be treated.
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