What Parenting Taught Me About Validation, Boundaries, and Letting People Feel What They Feel
One of the hardest things I've had to navigate after divorce has nothing to do with schedules, holidays, or logistics.
It's knowing that sometimes my daughter would rather be at her other mother's house.
Even writing that stings a little.
But over time, I've learned something important:
her wanting to be somewhere else doesn't mean she doesn't want to be with me.
Sometimes she just wants to be with her friends.
And I can understand that without immediately giving her what she wants.
That distinction has taught me more about boundaries than I ever expected.
Because sometimes loving someone looks like listening to what they want, respecting how they feel, and still saying:
I hear you. And the answer is still no.
Two Homes. Two Completely Different Lives.
My daughter's two homes could not be more different.
My ex lives in a small single-family subdivision. The kind with cul-de-sacs and sidewalks. My daughter's best friends live right next door. There's a pool in the backyard. They're constantly entertaining, traveling, doing things, and there is almost always someone around for her to play with.
Then there's my house.
I live on five acres.
We have goats and chickens. We grow mint for the goats. We have a homemade ATV track. We kayak and hike. We take walks. We sit on the front porch and watch the deer.
Sometimes we search for foxes.
Sometimes we catch frogs in mud puddles.
My life is intentionally slower.
That doesn't mean I am slow.
I wear a lot of hats. I run a business. I coach. I consult. I speak. I write. Some days I'm moving from one thing to the next and working late because that's what needs to happen.
But when I'm not working, I don't want to live in a constant state of
go, go, go.
I've already lived that life.
I spent years feeling like I couldn't sit down. Rest felt lazy. Every moment needed to be productive. If there was open space, I filled it.
I don't want that anymore.
The slower pace I've created has given me something I desperately needed:
Peace.
It has given me the freedom to enjoy my family and the life I've worked so hard to build.
And it isn't about working less.
It's about working intentionally.
Some days that means hustling hard.
Other days it means taking the day off to chaperone my daughter's kayaking trip.
Both can belong in the same life.
Then Came: “I'm Bored.”
One day recently, my daughter asked if she could go to my ex's house because she was bored.
And, listen, my first response was not some beautiful, emotionally intelligent parenting moment.
The Gen X in me immediately thought:
You don't even know what bored is.
I got irritated.
“Go find something to do.”
“Be creative.”
“Use your imagination.”
You know. All the things parents have been saying to bored children since the beginning of time.
But there was something else happening underneath my irritation.
It hurt.
For a split second, it's easy to hear I'd rather go to Mom's as:
I'd rather not be here.
That's the part we don't always talk about.
When you share custody, there are moments when your child will prefer something about the other household.
And if you're not careful, you can make their preference mean something about you.
Is her house more fun?
Does she like being there more?
Am I the boring house?
But I've had enough of these moments now to know better.
She wasn't rejecting me.
She missed her friends.
Of course she did.
So I did something I constantly tell my clients to do.
I took a breath.
The Pause Changed the Way I Parent
That breath gave me enough space to stop reacting and start thinking about the situation from her perspective.
Going back and forth between two homes must be hard sometimes.
She isn't simply changing houses.
She's moving between two completely different rhythms.
At one house, friends are right outside the door.
At the other, there's five acres, animals, nature, and a whole lot more quiet.
Neither one is better.
They're just different.
And instead of trying to convince her that she shouldn't be bored, I changed the conversation.
I acknowledged that she missed her friends.
I told her I understood why she wanted to see them and reminded her that she'd see them again in a few days.
I gave her a few ideas of things she could do.
And then I held my boundary.
Tonight was our time together, and that mattered to me.
Now, there are absolutely times when I let her go be with her friends during my time. I'm not interested in creating some rigid rule simply because a custody schedule says where she is supposed to be.
But I also don't want “I'm bored” to automatically mean we change the plan.
I want her to know that her time with me is important to me.
I want her to learn that she doesn't always need a device, a friend, or someone else to entertain her.
And most importantly, I wanted her to know:
I can respect what you want without always giving you what you want.
Validation Doesn't Mean Agreement
There's actually psychology behind this distinction.
Emotional validation means acknowledging another person's experience without necessarily agreeing with it. Harvard Health describes validation as helping someone feel heard and understood while making an important distinction: validating a feeling is not the same thing as approving the action or behavior that follows from it.
That's what I had been missing in my first reaction.
When I said, essentially, Go find something to do. You're fine, I was trying to talk her out of her experience.
She
was bored.
She
did miss her friends.
And it probably is difficult sometimes to move back and forth between two homes that operate very differently.
None of that required me to change my answer.
I could hold both:
I understand why you feel this way.
And you're staying here tonight.
For children navigating divorce, that kind of listening matters. Child Mind Institute specifically recommends allowing children to express difficult feelings without immediately trying to fix them. It also emphasizes consistency, routines, and clear expectations as children adjust to life between households.
And here's something I found especially reassuring: children can learn that different households have different expectations. Consistency within each home can still help them understand what to expect, even when the two homes aren't identical.
I don't have to recreate her other home.
And my ex doesn't have to recreate mine.
And Then Came the Frogs
Less than an hour later, my phone started going off.
My daughter was sending me pictures.
She had discovered frogs in a mud puddle.
She'd ride her four-wheeler around the property, stop to search for more frogs, and then send me pictures of what she'd found.
The kid who had been so bored was suddenly completely absorbed in her own little adventure.
She played outside for hours.
And here's what surprised me about that moment:
I was proud of myself.
Not because I'd proven my house wasn't boring.
Not because I'd been right and she'd been wrong.
I was proud because I had held my boundary
and made room for her feelings.
I had responded like the kind of mom I want to be.
And, as an added bonus, she'd figured out what to do with the space I'd left for her.
There's good evidence that this kind of child-directed play matters. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that play supports skills including problem-solving, creativity, executive function, self-regulation, and resilience, and specifically encourages giving children unstructured time to play.
I don't think one afternoon catching frogs magically transformed my daughter's brain.
But I do think there's value in not immediately filling every empty space for our kids.
And maybe there's value in not doing it for ourselves, either.
When Did We Become So Uncomfortable With Empty Space?
This is where the lesson stopped being only about parenting for me.
How many adults say they want more freedom...
and then don't know what to do when they get it?
We fill the open hour.
Check our phones.
Answer an email.
Start another project.
Turn something on.
Make plans.
Find someone to talk to.
I know because I used to do it constantly.
There was a time in my life when sitting still made me feel guilty.
If I wasn't producing something, accomplishing something, helping someone, or checking something off a list, I felt like I was wasting time.
I've had to learn how to let peace feel like peace instead of interpreting it as laziness.
And I wonder sometimes if we're so accustomed to stimulation that when life finally gets quiet, we mistake that quiet for something being wrong.
My daughter called it boredom.
I used to call it being unproductive.
Different words.
Maybe not entirely different experiences.
Coaching Reflection: You Can Let Someone Be Disappointed
There's another lesson here that reaches far beyond our children.
We are allowed to let people be disappointed.
That's a hard one, especially for people who are used to being the fixer.
Someone we love is unhappy with our decision, so we change it.
An employee is overwhelmed, so we take the work back.
A client wants something outside our boundaries, so we make an exception.
A family member doesn't like our answer, so we overexplain until we've practically talked ourselves out of it.
We confuse being compassionate with making sure no one ever feels uncomfortable because of a decision we've made.
But someone's disappointment doesn't automatically mean your boundary is wrong.
You can listen.
You can empathize.
You can acknowledge their experience.
You can even understand completely why they want something different.
And your answer can still be no.
That's not a lack of compassion.
Sometimes it's what aligned leadership, parenting, and relationships require.
The Conversation After the Moment Matters Too
Later, once everything had settled, my daughter and I sat outside on the swing.
I've learned that I like circling back after the emotion has passed.
Not when either of us is irritated.
Not when I'm trying to win the argument.
Not when she's frustrated because she isn't getting what she wants.
Later.
When there's room to actually hear each other.
I talked to her about the differences between her two homes.
I told her neither one was better.
They're simply different.
At her other home, she gets the pool, her neighborhood friends, travel, and a house that's often full of activity.
At mine, she gets frogs and four-wheelers.
Goats and chickens.
Kayaks and turtles.
Five acres to explore.
A different pace.
And maybe there's something pretty amazing about getting to experience both.
But more than anything, I wanted her to understand why I'd made the decision I made.
I hear you.
Your wants matter to me.
Your feelings matter to me.
And my time with you matters to me too.
I don't need her to love every decision I make in order for her to know she's loved.
That might be one of the most important things I'm learning as a mother.
You Don't Have to Abandon Yourself to Make Someone Else Feel Heard
There was a version of me who probably would have struggled much more with that moment.
The sting of she'd rather be somewhere else might have dictated my response.
Maybe I would have given in.
Maybe I would have tried desperately to make our house more entertaining.
Maybe I would have turned it into a competition that no one else was even having.
But the life I'm building now isn't about proving that my way is better.
It's about knowing what matters to me and having the courage to live accordingly.
That's what alignment looks like in real life.
Not perfect reactions.
Not never getting irritated.
Not saying the right thing on the first try.
Sometimes it's simply catching yourself before your fear, insecurity, guilt, or old habits make the decision for you.
Take the breath.
Ask yourself:
What am I actually feeling right now?
What does this person need me to hear?
What boundary matters to me here?
Can I honor both?
Sometimes the answer will change.
Sometimes you'll realize the boundary isn't actually important.
And sometimes you'll realize:
I can love you. I can hear you. I can understand why you're disappointed. And I can still mean what I said.
That afternoon, my daughter wanted a different answer.
She didn't get it.
But she did get a mother who listened.
And I got a phone full of frog pictures.
I'll take that as a win.
Pause & Reflect
Think about a relationship where you find yourself trying to fix the other person's discomfort.
What happens inside you when they're disappointed with your answer?
Do you explain, negotiate, give in, or abandon a boundary because making them feel better feels easier than allowing them to be unhappy?
The next time it happens, try creating just a little space before you respond.
Listen. Validate. Then decide.
Because making someone feel heard doesn't require making every uncomfortable feeling disappear.
And sometimes the most loving answer really is:
I hear you. And the answer is still no.
Continue Your Midlife Awakening
Learning to live by your own values often means getting comfortable with the fact that not everyone will understand or agree with every choice you make.
That's part of moving from a life built around expectations, guilt, and obligation to one built with intention.
In The Midlife Awakening: Redefining Success, Love and Purpose On Your Own Terms, I share more about what it took for me to stop living by default and start making choices based on the life I actually wanted to build.
Because creating a life that feels like yours isn't about getting every decision right.
It's about learning to recognize when you've handed the decision over to everyone else, and taking your seat back at the wheel.
