KTAB – 5/23/07 - Kids, Boundaries, and Self-Control

Lead-in: You’ve been talking about helping kids have healthy boundaries.

Kids first have to know where the boundaries are. Then, they have to gain control over their impulses to overstep the boundaries to get what they want. Kids who haven’t been socialized to know what is personally and interpersonally appropriate violate the boundaries of others, but not necessarily with the intent to harm, not at first. They act on what they want or feel – they act on impulse, without understanding the effect their actions have on others – and they wouldn’t be able to control their impulses if they did understand since they’ve never learned how to. So, first they learn the rules, then they need guidance and help in following them,since up to this point they have acted only on impulse.

Question: So the first step is teaching what the limits are, then how to stay in them. What’s the best way to do that?

Basically, parents and other caregivers can help children develop healthy boundaries and the self-control to stay within them by:

Building a nurturing, caring relationship. We learn to control our behavior partly to please the people who care about us. We learn best how to respect the needs and boundaries of others, “social interest,” when our own boundaries have been respected, so we know what it feels like.

Give children rules and limits that are clear and simple so they’ll know what’s expected of them. Good teaching involves giving the information necessary to understand, explaining and modeling the behavior desired, guiding the child’s efforts to follow the rule until he or she has it down,
and providing close enough supervision to insure that the rule is followed consistently and to provide positive feedback.

Help them stop – with kindness and firmness – when they are overstepping the boundaries, which is oftentimes easier said than done – more on this next time.

Encourage activities to strengthen the skills children need for self-control. “Just saying NO” to my impulse doesn’t change the impulse or meet the need that triggered it – it just stopped it, leaving the impulse frustrated and the want or need unmet. This is as true for adults as it is for children. At the point that I’ve been prevented from doing what I was going to do, I need a way to deal effectively with the frustration, or sometimes outright anger, I feel because of it, an outlet to allow me to diffuse the frustration constructively. And ultimately, I need ways to live my life and take care of myself so that I don’t need to violate my own and others’ boundaries.