Townsend is not only concerned about hot-button issues like drugs and sexuality, however. Violence and aggression can easily be overlooked or normalized as just a phase and have equally negative consequences for the teen's development. Rude and violent teens become rude and violent adults. Townsend writes: "In addition to intervening directly when your teen is aggressive in your presence, you will also need to do as much prevention as possible and to set up workable consequences and helps for those times you find out about the aggressiveness" (Chapter 21). A lack of respect for parents, teachers, even peers, must not be tolerated and must be consistently rebuked.

Townsend's concept of boundaries is of clearly defined rules and behavior that are set by parents. However, these rules are not simply arbitrarily created by mothers and fathers, like 'no television on school...

Parents should feel confident setting personal 'home' rules, and do what they feel need to do to create moral adults. Secretly, teens thrive upon rules, even if they do test boundaries. Breaking rules should have reasonable consequences for teens; otherwise there is no point to having rules at all.
Teens are not the only ones who seek boundaries -- all individuals do in the context of counseling relationships. This is why it is essential that therapists set reasonable boundaries between themselves and clients, give honest feedback when clients engage in negative, self-defeating and regressive behaviors, and set realistic goals for the clients to strive to achieve. This is how 'moving forward' and growing becomes possible.