Every daughter is a story waiting to be told. Every mother is a chapter already written. Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show where we explore the most complex, beautiful, and sometimes challenging and painful bond between mothers and daughters. I'm your host Brittany Scott, and each week we'll dive deep into these relationships. From navigating teenage years to building adult friendships, from healing generational wounds to celebrating shared triumphs, we're here to share, learn, and grow together. Join us as we talk with real mothers and daughters, expert therapists and coaches and thought leaders who help us understand this unique connection that shape who we are. Whether you're a mother seeking to understand, a daughter looking for perspective, or someone who wants to strengthen this precious bond. This is your safe space. Welcome back to the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show. It's your host, Brittney. In this episode, we are going to talk about boundaries, how to set boundaries, what boundaries should feel like when they're healthy versus not healthy, and how boundaries change over the course of your lifespan and when you're in different stages of your relationship with your mom. Or just at a different stage in your life, how boundaries should evolve and how they should change in that. Boundaries are never a one-time thing. Your boundaries should change. They should evolve and they should grow as you grow. Mother daughter relationships can be so difficult because it's one of the longest relationships that we'll have in our lifetime. It's a relationship that goes through more changes than any other relationship that we have, and it's one where. Shadows and mirrors seem to be always present where we can reflect back uncomfortable truths or maybe our moms can reflect back uncomfortable realizations about who they are or who we are or what we've been through. Not only are people living longer, but they are living longer in good health. It is no longer unusual for a healthy 80-year-old mother. To have a 55-year-old daughter who in turn has a 30-year-old daughter who in turn has a 5-year-old daughter. The newness of the adult daughter, older mother relationship is reflected in our vocabulary and our norms. More specifically, our lack of vocabulary or our lack of norms. What is appropriate maternal behavior? When your daughter is 60? When she's 40, when she's 30, what a 5-year-old? How are moms and daughters supposed to behave? We don't have norms for this. And this is where boundaries come in and why they're so important and why they're ever evolving. A survey by the Gottman Institute revealed that mother-daughter relationships with clearly established boundaries reported 42% higher satisfaction rates than those with poor boundaries. And research by the Family Institute found that 65% of mother-daughter pairs struggle with establishing boundaries during major life transitions such as marriage, childbirth, or career changes. So if you're struggling with boundaries, please know that you are not alone and that you can make these changes if you want to. Boundaries are hard at first because a lot of it is mindset shifts and believing that you can have boundaries and that you can enforce them. Then it becomes knowing how to set boundaries and the appropriate way to do it. That way you can actually enforce them. So many people are trying to set boundaries that are not enforceable by them. It would have to be enforced by the other party, which then turns it into a request and not a boundary. and when I think about setting boundaries in my own mother-daughter relationship, I think about. When my daughter was first born and in episode 13 of the podcast, if you go back and listen, me and my mom talk a little bit about this, but I was doing things with my daughter and in my motherhood and parenting in ways that she didn't. A few examples. I clothed diapered, I breastfed for almost two and a half years, and I did baby led weaning instead of purees. And all three of those were different from how my mom parented or the decisions that she made when I was a baby. And so I received pushback. I received lots of questioning that were not curiosity questions, but more of Why are you doing this? Are you sure this is what you wanna do? I'm unsure of this decision, questioning versus being curious about it, and a boundary that I set that. Would fall under the nonverbal boundaries category. I'll talk about this later. I would send my mom articles about what I was doing and why. That way she could read for herself and not need me to explain or to tell her, so that way she could stop questioning me basically, and she could read from experts on why I was doing what I was doing, how this was going to. Help my daughter or why it just mattered to me. 'cause cloth diapers wasn't necessarily going to help or hurt my daughter, but it's what I wanted to do and I enjoyed it and I fully cloth diapered her from birth to when we started potty training. It can be exhausting to have someone questioning your decisions in your parenting or motherhood. Especially decisions that you fully researched, learned about and thought through and decided that this is what you wanted to do and then to receive pushback about it. So sitting the articles was my form of setting a boundary on, if you're interested in what I'm doing, I want you to come to me with curiosity versus coming to me with pushback and confusion when you can just remain curious about what I'm doing and why. Okay, so let's jump into what boundaries are healthy versus unhealthy, and how to appropriately set boundaries. Boundaries are a set of rules or limits that you place inside of your relationships to help you get your needs met. And so getting your needs met can be about safety. It can be about emotional caretaking, it can be physical safety, like actual maybe hugging or touching things of that nature. They are, boundaries are how you get your needs met. Example of having a need and using a boundary to get it met. You have a need to feel safe in your relationships when there is an argument or some form of conflict. And due to your parents yelling in your childhood, yelling, sends your nervous system into a spiral, you feel unsafe, you maybe you feel physically unwell, maybe scared. Maybe it makes you go into your shell, and so it's hard to actually have a productive conversation when someone is yelling at you. So inside of your relationship, you need your partner to remain calm whenever they are upset or you guys are having a big conversation that might include conflict. So the boundary sounds like in order for me to have a productive conversation with you, when you are upset with me, I need your voice to remain calm and steady. When you start yelling, I feel, insert however you feel in that moment. And so I'm no longer gonna be able to be a part of the conversation if you can't stop yelling. And this boundary, the way that I've outlined it, is enforceable by you because you're no longer going to remain inside of this conversation. You won't continue to have it if they continue to yell. And so telling somebody, stop yelling at me. Puts all of the enforcement on them, it requires them to stop and adjust. It requires them to help you to enforce your boundary. Whereas if you say, okay, I'm gonna walk away from this. I'm going to maybe hang up the phone, I am gonna go to the room and close the door and give you some time to calm down. I'm no longer going to be a part of this conversation until you can lower your voice. Now the enforcement is on you. Which is where you want your boundaries to be. You always wanna be able to be the one to enforce the boundary in order for it to actually be a boundary. Otherwise, you're basically sending off lots of requests to other people, and that's not going to be effective in your life, and it's actually going to be a lot more frustrating and make it harder for you to create and set appropriate boundaries that will keep you safe and will help you to meet your own needs. It's important to recognize what healthy and unhealthy boundaries look like in a mother-daughter relationship. In a relationship with healthy boundaries, you'll notice mutual respect for each other's time and space. A mother might check before offering advice with something like, Hey, would you like my thoughts on this? And a daughter feels comfortable saying, I appreciate the offer, but I've got this handled. Asking for permission rather than assuming is so important, and it indicates signs of healthy boundaries inside of your relationship. It's really important that both mother and daughter can express needs without fear of rejection or dramatic responses. There's room for separate interests and relationships outside of the mother-daughter bond, and there's room for the daughter to grow into who she wants to be without the mom feeling that's some kind of attack on her. These are two different people. Neither person should feel responsible for the other's emotions, though they care deeply for each other. So on the flip side. There can be some red flags and boundaries that might need attention. For example, guilt trips, saying things like, after all I've done for you, or If you loved me, you would do. These are classic violations to boundaries. These are ways of making the other person feel bad for even having a boundary, and that's not fair inside of any relationship, especially a mother-daughter relationship. Another sign where your boundaries might need some attention is if you're feeling drained after interactions. Or that your anxiety spikes when it's time to stand up for yourself or protect yourself, or time to set a boundary. You might even start to feel anxious just from a phone call from your mom. These are all signs that you need to take a look at your boundaries because something may not be going correctly. If you're unsure if your boundaries need work or if maybe they're not strong enough or if they're not being effective, start by noticing your body signals. A lot of times our bodies are responding to how we feel emotionally well before our brain has caught up and has given us the word to express it. So really slow down and listen to your body and notice how it's responding and what it's trying to tell you. That not in your stomach when your boundary is crossed is valuable information. It's not something to ignore or to push through that physical reaction that you have. Maybe. Your heart starts racing or maybe you get sweaty. These are things that are often the first clue that something needs to change in your relationship dynamic. Don't ignore them. Our bodies respond before our brain has words, so don't wait till you have the words to do something about it. Notice that your body is trying to tell you something, and maybe it's time to slow down and listen. Let's shift gears a bit into why boundaries matter inside of mother-daughter relationships. So as I said earlier. The mother-daughter relationship has multiple stages inside of it. With each developmental stage that a daughter goes through, that relationship is going to change. I have a podcast episode talking about the different stages. In episode six of my podcast, I talk about the six different stages of the mother-daughter relationship. During each stage of the mother-daughter relationship, the boundaries are of course going to look different. The boundaries that work when a daughter is 15 won't be the boundaries that work when she's 21, 30, 45. Like these different ages and stages are going to matter, and they're gonna play a role in what the boundaries look like. The mother-daughter relationship is dynamic. It's ever evolving, and it's gonna require calibration. You're gonna have to continue to check in and notice that when a stage changes, the boundaries will too. Adolescent is often the first major boundary of negotiation. Teenagers naturally push for more privacy and independence, wanting parents to knock before entering their room, keep their diaries private, don't read journals, letting them make personal choices about their closest friends or the clothes that they choose to wear, or how they choose to express themselves in a safe and healthy way. Of course, these aren't rejections of the mother, but they're healthy steps in the. Forming the identity of who this girl is going to turn in to be, what woman she wants to be, and then college years. When daughters first leave home, the boundaries again, they're shifting. They're gonna require something new. Suddenly the daughter's making daily decisions without her mother's input. She's choosing when she's gonna go study what she's gonna go eat, what time she's going to eat, what time she's going to wake up, who she's gonna spend her time with, if she's gonna show up to class or not. All of the decisions are being made on her own. Now, when before her mother, probably heavy input on a lot of these things that she was doing. Daily. Mothers who continue to monitor these choices or expect detailed daily updates, often create tension. It's just not appropriate and it's also not gonna work. The healthiest transitions involve mothers stepping back into more of a consultant role rather than a manager role. In episode six of the podcast, I talk about how moms go from. Being the guide in the teenage years, basically like a tour guide. So you are taking your daughter where you need her to go, and you are guiding her through this maze of teenage life, and you're making sure that she's with you along the way and you're showing her where everything is, and you're standing in front of her. She's standing behind you in the college years. You go from standing in front of to standing on side of her, and maybe there are points where you guys hold hands and there's points where you let the hands go and she's walking on her own. And that's what's supposed to happen. These things are supposed to change Major life events, absolutely trigger boundary negotiation. Her boundaries are definitely going to change. There's gonna be new boundaries around holiday traditions, relationships with her in-laws, couples privacy and the things that happened in her childhood home are going to shift to happening into the home and the family that she's creating with her new partner, I. Then when grandchildren enter the picture, an entirely new set of boundaries around parenting practices, unsolicited advice, grandparents' involvement are going to be negotiated and probably renegotiated depending on the age of those children. So boundaries are always ever evolving. And perhaps one of the most challenging transitions because the roles begin to reverse, is aging mothers. As mothers age, daughters often become more involved in healthcare decisions. Financial matters and eventually caregiving. This requires incredible sensitivity around maintaining the mother's dignity and autonomy while ensuring her needs are met. The daughter might need to set boundaries around her own capacity to provide care, which some of these can trigger a lot of guilt. The healthiest mother-daughter relationships recognize that boundary needs will evolve. The recognition of this evolution will help to approach these shifts with open communication rather than assumption or resentment. I recommend regular relationship check-ins where both parties can discuss what's working and what might need adjustments as their lives change, especially during major transitions. During going into adolescent years, teenage years going into college. I recommend that mom leads these boundary conversations and. Make sure that her daughter knows that her boundaries are supposed to change and that there's no need to feel guilty about changing them, and that it's important to just keep communication open so that the change can be smooth. So children entering, especially that one, when the daughter now becomes the mother, I think it's important for her to know that she's gotta speak up about the boundaries that she needs, because each of us want different things from our moms when we become mothers. Some of us want more involvement from our mothers and some of us want less. And so that daughter to be able to speak up about the evolution she is going through, and that way the boundaries can shift and change appropriately for what she needs in that moment and what she may need later when her child is now five and then maybe 15 because these are also going to look very different. Now let's shift into how I teach women to sit. Healthy and appropriate boundaries. These can be used in any area of your life, not just with your mom, but any area where you're needing to set a boundary. So I want you to start with what interaction you're creating a boundary for. Bring that to mind. If you're journaling or writing any of this down, write the interaction where you feel like a boundary needs to be set, but you don't know what it is or you don't know how to set it. So we're gonna start with the interaction. I want you to think about inside of that interaction where you don't feel good, where you feel unsafe, maybe where your body is responding negatively so that not in your stomach, your heart racing, maybe you're feeling anxious or worried or scared. Think about what's happening in that moment. And then from there, I want you to move on to your need. What need is your body or your mind trying to get met and. This may be the hardest part of boundary setting in the way that I teach it. I really want you to think about what need you are trying to meet in this moment. Are you trying to remain financially stable? Are you trying to feel safe emotionally? Are you trying to maintain a time boundary? Like I really want you to think about what need you're trying to get met. I need to be able to pick my child up from school on time, so I need the last meeting of the day to actually end on time. You may not fully be in control of that at work, but that's where a boundary and a conversation can come in. I need to be able to come to you in times of conflict or in times where I'm not feeling the best emotionally, and I need to be able to voice that to you without fear of. Pushback without worrying about upsetting you. I need my emotions to be able to just be the center of attention in this conversation. The need can be anything that you know is going to keep you safe. Once you have the need established, then you can set a boundary around that need. So let's create an example. You need to feel safe during an argument or during a conversation that includes conflict in order to. Feel safe inside of a conversation that includes conflict. You need the other person to remain calm and not raise their voice. That is how you get that need met. Voices stay low or calm at a regular pitch, and they don't raise and there's no yelling or aggression involved. So the boundary sounds something like this. Hey, when you start yelling, when we are in conflict, I feel. Unsafe. I feel scared. I feel uneasy, and it makes it hard to remain a part of the conversation. I want us to be able to resolve conflict in our relationship easily, and so I need your voice to remain calm when we are having conflict. That way I can remain a part of the conversation, otherwise I feel, feel unsafe, scared, uneasy, overwhelmed, and it makes it hard for me to remain a part of the conversation. Those are two examples of how that can sound. So how you enforce your own boundary because you are the enforcer, not other people. Hey, your voice is rising and I no longer feel comfortable continuing this conversation. I'm gonna hang up the phone and maybe we can talk again this evening. Whatever you're going to do to get yourself out of that conversation is how you will enforce that boundary. Other simple boundary statements can sound like, Hey mom, I appreciate your concern about my parenting, but I need to make these decisions for myself. I love our conversations, but I need to limit our calls to twice a week. Those are simple statements that will help you to get your needs met. We've talked a lot about communicating boundaries through conversation, but I know many mother daughter pairs struggle with direct conversations, so that's where nonverbal, that boundaries can be established. Now, while clear verbal communication is ideal, nonverbal boundary setting can be powerful, especially when introducing new boundaries gradually or in families where direct confrontation isn't culturally comfortable. Time management can be one of the most effective nonverbal boundary tools. If your mother is calling daily at inconvenient times, you might consistently let those calls go to voicemail and establish a pattern of returning her calls at specific times that work better for you. This would create a natural rhythm that respects your boundaries without requiring a potentially difficult conversation. Physical cues can be powerful too if your mother has a habit of walking into your home and immediately rearranging your kitchen or checking your refrigerator. You might gently guide her to the living room and have tea ready there for her. You're redirecting the behavior without any kind of confrontation. Now, sometimes setting boundaries is easier said than done. You may receive pushback, you might feel guilty, you might actually be guilt tripped by the other party can be hard. I can't make an entire episode on boundaries, especially boundaries with your mother and not think about or take into account the cultural differences that lie for some people, I. There are some cultures where setting boundaries will ostracize you. It will mean that you lose your community. It won't just be that people don't like your boundaries, but that this has not actually hasn't been done in your culture, in your family. And sometimes boundaries can creep into unhealthy dynamics where now we're just thinking about ourselves individually. When there are some cultures that are not individualistic, they're more collective, there's a collectivism within the culture, and so there are gonna be some boundaries that just don't work. And so as you're thinking about this for your own life, or what your relationship with your mom needs to look like, for you to feel good, you have to take into account, you know, the culture that you come from. There are gonna be some boundaries that are not gonna fit or are not gonna be appropriate. Or if you attempt to at setting some stronger boundaries, it can ostracize you from your family. So if that's important to you, don't do that to yourself. And I'm sure there are other boundaries that you can fall to that will help you to remain safe and feel good in your relationships, but won't ostracize you or won't put you outside of the collectivism. I created a PDF worksheet to accompany this podcast episode and it's free to download. It will help you walk through setting your own boundaries, whether that be with your mom, with your family, friends, inside of romantic relationships, boundaries at work. It really can be used anywhere. Learning to set boundaries doesn't have to just be with one person. You know what I discuss is mother-daughter relationships, but learning to set boundaries to keep yourself safe is going to take you far in all of your relationships. Boundaries are important. They're needed for both parties, not just one person. We should all learn how to set boundaries and communicate them to our family and friends in a way that feels good for us, but also in a way that makes it easy to enforce these boundaries. In the show notes, I'll link a link to download the boundaries worksheet that I created for you. That's all for today's episode of the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show. Thanks so much for spending this time with me. I hope you picked up some valuable insights that you can start using right away in your own relationship to create deeper connection and understanding. If something from today's episode resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with the mother or daughter in your life who needs to hear this message. And while you're at it, please consider leaving a rating and review so we can reach more families and transform the way mothers and daughters relate to each other. For those ready to take the next step. You can visit my website to learn more about my private coaching programs and my program designed specifically for mother-daughter pairs. Whether you're dealing with communication challenges, life transitions, or just wanna strengthen an already good relationship, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one.