WTF are Boundaries Nowdays

We are building a world of impenetrable walls

Photo by Anas Ahmed on Unsplash

My 12-year-old walks into the room and informs me that I need to earn her respect and respect her boundaries.

My crime?

I caught her reading a book at 2:00 AM and committed the unspeakable act of telling her to go to bed.

WTF are boundaries anymore?

On a personal level, the visceral reality of crossed boundaries is intimately understood. Whether it pertains to bodily autonomy, emotional safety, or financial security, the gut-wrenching feeling is undeniable. It is a profoundly human experience.

However, society has witnessed the unfortunate infiltration of therapy linguistics into the cultural lexicon, often reduced to a common slur — a tragic irony.

Genuine, clinical therapy language is inherently beautiful, deeply researched, well-developed, and profoundly helpful for individuals genuinely seeking healing or growth.

Yet, social media has taken this complex medicine, stripped it of its actual meaning, and reduced it to a mere bumper sticker on a reel.

Phrases such as “self-love,” “self-protection,” and “I am enough” have been completely hijacked by the internet. We have twisted these concepts to construct fortresses around our egos, transforming “self-care” into a weapon to assert our righteousness and condemn others.

If accountability is sought, it is dismissed as a boundary violation. If a compromise is requested, it is labelled as toxic.

Alarmingly, these weaponized bumper stickers are now being handed to our children, who consume them through screens for hours daily.

Imagine a twelve-year-old looking you dead in the eye, declaring you “rude” and “crossing their boundaries” simply because you corrected their pronunciation of a word.

One word.

Their defense? “Well, I hear it this way, so you are wrong. You are forcing your belief onto mine, hence I am uncomfortable, which means you are crossing my boundaries.”

Are you fuckin kidding me?

When children ingest these massive, loaded adult ideas from a smartphone screen, they interpret them literally.

“I am enough” might be translated in their minds as: “I am a finished product. I do not need anyone. I don’t need to learn.”

Placing these deeply complex, highly nuanced psychological concepts into a child’s mind is akin to attempting to force an XXS shirt onto an XXL body, structurally impossible, a total mismatch.

This is not to suggest children are unintelligent; quite the contrary. It is simply that they lack the life experience necessary to comprehend the nuance embedded within these enormous ideas.

To a child’s developing mind, thoughts are concrete. Things are perceived as black or white, safe or unsafe, right or wrong. They lack the cognitive scaffolding to understand that one can love someone and simultaneously set a firm limit, or that a boundary is intended to preserve a relationship, not terminate it.

When a complex clinical tool is given to an unformed brain, it is not used for healing; it is used literally. A phrase intended for deep adult introspection is flattened into a shield, protecting them from the discomfort of learning.

The danger of this literal interpretation is vividly illustrated by a past experience of mine.

During a rainy long weekend in May, while camping by the lake, my daughter expressed a desire to go to the water and asked if she could feel the water.

I said, “Honey, sure, go ahead. Your shoes are waterproof, you should be okay.”

To an adult, common sense dictates a cautious dab of toes at the water’s edge. Minutes later, an older lady called out, “Excuse me, is this your daughter? She is completely soaked.”

I looked over to find her knee-deep in the freezing lake. When questioned, what on earth was she thinking, she looked utterly confused and stated, “Well, you told me they were waterproof.”

Children interpret advice literally; they cannot read between the lines.

Thus, when a child scrolls through social media and encounters a loaded phrase like “protect your boundaries,” they translate “waterproof” into “invincible.”

In the adult world, respect is indeed earned. But in the mouth of a child being told to put a book down and go to sleep at bedtime? It is an emotional hijack. In her mind, enforcing bedtime equates to hurting her feelings. Hurting her feelings, in turn, signifies “disrespect.” And asking for accountability becomes “crossing a boundary.”

The truth is, we have become remarkably comfortable discussing — and these are indeed crucial topics — rights, needs, protection, and self-worth. However, we have grown deeply uncomfortable addressing responsibility, restraint, character, obligation, and virtue.

Amidst all this trendy, hyper-individualistic internet linguistics, we have completely forgotten the fundamental distinction between a boundary and a virtue.

A boundary serves as a line of self-preservation, designed to keep negative influences out. A virtue, conversely, represents a standard of inward moral character.

Respecting authority, practicing self-control, and accepting accountability are virtues. They demand introspection, learning, and the bending of one’s ego to reality. Instead, we might be teaching a generation to employ “boundaries” as an excuse to circumvent virtues entirely. We have provided them with an algorithm-approved shield, protecting them from the painful, yet necessary, work of growing up.

We have unleashed and keep feeding a beast called an algorithm that thrives on our biases. Whatever a self-righteous twelve-year-old (or an emotionally stagnant adult) desires to believe about themselves, the algorithm is readily available to fortify it tenfold beyond actual reality.

It takes the profound, useful work of psychology, butchers it for clicks, and mirrors our worst, most isolating impulses back to us as “healing.” It convinces us that our walls are righteous, concealing the messed-up truth that we are merely locking ourselves into self-made cages.

We are no longer protecting ourselves. We are simply refusing to grow up, wrapped in a blanket of therapy-speak, standing behind impenetrable walls — holding a fully charged phone in an empty room and wondering why we feel miserable.