Family Boundaries: Turning Conflict into Consensus

Many people, seeing how our four children love to care for others and pitch in around the house without being asked, are curious what our secret is. This is especially puzzling given the age gap — our second daughter and third child are ten years apart, which for young people is practically two generations. Our two daughters went through elementary and middle school in Taiwan's competitive academic system, then finished high school and college in North America, and are now in graduate school; our two sons, meanwhile, went through elementary and middle school in North America and are now right in the thick of their turbulent teenage years.

The truth is, every family has its own hard chapters. If there's anything unique about ours, it's that whenever I run into a thorny problem in daily life, I bring it up during Family Time so everyone can help carry the burden and share in the joy together. Because the children have taken part in these discussions from a young age, freely voicing their own opinions, they've also learned, almost without realizing it, how to take on responsibility. And 'setting reasonable family rules' has played no small part in that.

Who Sets the Rules?

The word 'family rules' can sound a bit stern — 'establishing household boundaries' fits better. We use Family Time to turn issues that easily spark conflict between parents and children into constructive discussion, and work out boundaries that everyone agrees are reasonable and workable. And as the children move through different stages of growing up, these boundaries flex and change along with them.

For example, from the time our children were small, they had to sit at the table to eat — if they left the table, that meant they were done, no more food. So in our house, you'd never see anyone chasing a child around trying to feed them. We made the most of the golden window between fifteen and eighteen months, when toddlers are learning to feed themselves; all I had to do was spread newspaper under the high chair and clean up once they'd finished eating.

When our two daughters were little, they were always fighting over who got into the bathtub first. It really didn't matter — a few minutes either way — but it turned into an unpleasant scene every time, so I asked them to come up with a solution themselves. After talking it over, the two sisters decided to make a chart, post it on the bathroom wall, and have the elder one check off each day, taking turns going first. It seems like such a small thing, but it was real training — from then on, the children learned they could always work out whatever problem was bothering them by talking it through in Family Time.

While the children were in elementary school, we as parents largely set the direction for family rules — drafting a first version and letting the kids revise it; say, three out of four rules would come from us, and the fourth would be left for them to amend. We’ve discussed all sorts of topics this way: how much allowance to give and how it should be used, how to divide up chores like washing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning, vacuuming, and taking out the trash, and how computers and phones should be used and managed — we hashed out every one of these with real energy.

Once the children reached middle school, most of the content of our family rules came from them, with us just making minor adjustments. This let the children know that as they grew up, they needed to shoulder more responsibility, learn to keep their commitments, and understand how to take part in shaping the rules themselves.

Facing New Challenges, Turning Danger into Safety

We often opened our home to our children's classmates and friends, whether to do homework or just hang out. We agreed on this beforehand: they were welcome to host their friends, but they had to take responsibility for cleaning up afterward together.

I remember one day some of my son’s classmates came over to do homework. After finishing their snacks, my son helped wash the dishes, and I overheard one of his friends ask, curiously, whether he only did chores today because they were visiting. My son told them no — he and his brother took turns doing this every day, one washing while the other helped put things away. Then he turned the question around and asked whether they had chores at home. It turned out that, as only children, they’d never had to do any housework at home — and after that, whenever they came to play at our house, they actually started enjoying learning to do chores alongside my son.

Technology changes so fast these days, and teenagers chase after the latest gadgets almost blindly, heavily swayed by peer pressure — and many parents feel like they simply can't keep up with such a fast-changing era. I've seen many families with teenagers caught in real difficulty over this, so when we set rules about it during Family Time, I make a point of first listening carefully to the children's own thoughts and taking their opinions into account.

When our two sons were in middle school, I allowed them to play brain-teasing computer games like Tetris, but I drew a firm line against violent, combat-style games, such as League of Legends, and especially avoided online games altogether. A few months ago, though, I discovered that our third child had been getting up in the middle of the night to secretly play the online game Toontown — it gave us quite a headache.

Ten years ago in Taiwan, I often heard parents of teenagers say they couldn't communicate with their kids at all — the kids would either shut themselves in their rooms, silently glued to the computer, or head off to internet cafes to play. Nowadays, teenagers with smartphones have it even easier — it's like carrying a small computer with you everywhere, always online — but that also makes it far easier to fall into technology's traps.

So we used family-safety settings to monitor how much time the children spent on the computer, and Wi-Fi controls to limit how long they could be online on their phones, filtering out inappropriate violent or sexual content, to help keep them from getting lost in the online world.

As parents, we know we have to face each new challenge wisely as it comes — not agreeing too readily to buy the latest tech gadgets for our children, carefully weighing the negative effects they might bring, and, more than that, understanding technology even better than our kids do, so that we can guide them onto the right path.

Redirecting Their Interests, To Everyone’s Delight

Through many conversations during Family Time, the children agreed to honor the boundaries we'd set together, boundaries that fit our actual situation and helped redirect their interests toward other hobbies. For instance, our two sons enjoyed playing ping-pong, so we helped them develop that interest — with one being left-handed and the other right-handed, they made great doubles partners. Their ping-pong coach once said something that struck our elder son deeply: 'No matter how high a score you rack up in an online game, in real life it still adds up to zero — meaningless, just a waste of your time and your life.'

Beyond that, our elder son loved watching Child Genius and studying international ping-pong players’ techniques on YouTube; our younger son enjoyed TED Talks and tech channels like MKBHD, and was especially fascinated by trends in the future development of smartphones.

Last summer we bought a 3D printer that had to be assembled ourselves. Since our elder son had learned SOLIDWORKS software at school, he took the lead on design, while his brother studied the hardware maintenance and printing side. Over Christmas break, the two brothers worked together to invite classmates and friends over for a ping-pong tournament, and printed the trophies themselves on the 3D printer — a meaningful touch. From their dad and sisters helping assemble the printer to the finished product finally emerging, the whole process was filled with things to be thankful for.

During Family Time, everyone agreed that from then on, instead of spending money buying birthday gifts for classmates, the boys would 3D-print something as a gift instead. Their friends loved it — since it was something the two brothers had designed together and spent at least five hours printing, the finished pieces were a delightful surprise. Many people had never seen anything like this new gadget, so whenever friends came to our house, they always had to see the 3D printer, and the boys never tired of talking their ears off about all its features.

In short, using Family Time to strengthen the parent-child bond turns contentious issues into constructive discussion, and lets us establish family rules together that can actually be lived out. If, after two or three months, they're not working — if everyone can't genuinely keep the commitments made — then it's time to bring it back to Family Time and revise them again.

Through this ongoing process of learning and practice, I firmly believe that many of the problems families face — communication between spouses, discipline issues, conflicts between parents and children, and so on — can gradually be resolved through the communication and discussion of Family Time. As the saying goes, 'When there's a relationship, nothing's really a problem.' I hope that as you invest in Family Time, you too will build strong, close family bonds, experience the joy of growing together, and make your home a joyful place filled with truth and true love.

1. Identify the issues that have recently been causing conflict at home.

2. Turn the issue into a constructive discussion.

3. Draft family boundaries that fit your current situation.

4. Review and adjust every two to three months.