Teaching children how to set healthy boundaries: 2023 guide

  • Save

As adults, most of us learn only too well that healthy boundaries are the secret to healthy relationships in life, but how many of us were taught this as children? Thankfully, parenting has moved on a long way since you and I were small humans. Today, as parents, we are armed with so much knowledge that we are able to pass on to our children, including how and why it is so important to set healthy boundaries, and yes that means in childhood too.

In the third in our three-part series with Dr Alison McClymont, leading child psychologist with over a decade worth of experience at the forefront of children’s mental health, we take a closer look at why teaching children how to set healthy boundaries is so important and where to start.

***

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries… we all have them, we all want them respected, but we rarely know how to express them in a calm and considerate manner. Boundaries play a large part in our transactional interactions with others, with our relationships and friendships, and of course- our parenting. Boundaries are the communication with another person – what you accept and what others can expect from you. There’s so much talk these days about teaching children this concept in order to protect them from bullying, abuse, and dysfunctional relationships – but how do we teach them?

No is a complete sentence

I actually saw this expression first on social media, and it really resonated with me. As the mother of two pre-school-aged children, I reflected how often I over-explain my decisions or responses to my children. I could not think of a single time, where I had simply said “no”, without the additional “because.

Whilst it is good to provide little ones with a reason for your actions particularly if the action was surprising or shocking to them, it is equally important to introduce the idea that sometimes, one isn’t needed. It really is OK to simply say “No I don’t want to/ cannot/ will not do that.”

I like the idea that by being succinct in our responses we are less likely to spiral into the adrenal panic that might trigger fight or flight mode. We are not allowing our cortisol to rise through heated debate, nor are we allowing old shame responses to be triggered, and our brain to start rampantly looking for ways to evade the situation through fawning or freezing.

Effective discipline requires consequences

We all know this one, and rare is the parent who isn’t guilty of at least one idle threat, but it is so important to only offer consequences that you are fully prepared to carry out. Expectations should be set beforehand,  and that goes for both punishments and rewards: “if you do x..y will happen, if you choose not to…z will happen”.

This helps enforce the idea to children that this is an expectation from someone else, they have a choice whether or not they fulfill that expectation and what will be the reward/punishment as a result of their choice. When you follow through on these agreed consequences, you also remind children – that your boundaries don’t move and you cannot be manipulated. This in turn models behaviour that their boundaries should be respected.

Body boundaries

Body boundaries is an emotional subject and one that parents can sometimes feel overwhelmed or triggered by. I find one of the easiest ways to explain this to children is to connect appropriate touch with a corresponding emotional sensation.

For example, a positive experience of touch might be explained as: “When mummy hugs me I feel warm inside”, “when my I cross the road and Daddy holds my hand I feel protected”, “When my friend hugged me when I fell down, I felt better”. Whereas negative touch could be explained like: “something that makes me feel jumpy in my tummy”, “something that makes me want to kick or punch”, “something that makes me feel like I want to run away” or “something that confused me and made me feel bad”.

By helping introduce the child to the idea that touch can be interpreted by the emotion it made us feel, helps to introduce the idea of body boundaries. Of course – we always remind children that ANY touch or bodily interaction that gave them a negative emotion is not OK, and no one has the right to make them feel that.

Being a good friend is about boundaries

Ah the playground, I don’t think I can think of another single location that we encounter in our lifespan that provides us with so much social learning both negative and positive. When my eldest child first came home crying from a negative experience with a friend, my internal dialogue went into panic mode. I went through anger, upset, confusion, and everything in between in a matter of minutes.

But after I had a word with myself and reminded myself as a trained therapist I should be able to separate my daughter’s experience from my own 30 years ago, and this wasn’t about me right now. I realised we might be able to use this example as a good social learning activity.

What is a good friend and what does it mean to have a friendship? A good friend is someone who treats us kindly and whom we enjoy the company of, and we can be a good friend by providing nice company to others and by trying to be kind. A friendship is also a negotiation of boundaries. Sometimes we do things we might prefer not to, like playing the game our friend wants, or listening to them talk about something we are not very interested in – but in doing so, we expect them to do the same for us.

We also expect that once we have told our friends what hurts us or makes us sad – they will refrain from doing this, as we will for them. To demonstrate a negative example of “boundaries in friendship”, we can use the example of “teasing”. In the olden days, people used to say that teasing was a valuable part of growing up, I couldn’t disagree more.

Teasing is the repeated breaking of another’s boundary for your own social gain or enjoyment. There is literally no benefit to this experience for anyone involved. An action that may generate a laugh in someone else, but produces tears or shame in another is very clearly not a good demonstration of friendship or respecting others’ boundaries.

When we allow children to “tease” others we tell them that its ok to ignore people’s boundaries in the most fundamental of ways- and contrary to old fashioned “wisdom” that playground bullying breeds resilience….as a mental health professional of over a decade I can assure you, it does not.

A flexible mind is a resilient mind

We don’t often speak in terms of boundaries, about having “less boundaries”. Boundaries are usually a discussion that involves strictly communicated terms and conditions. But it can also be helpful to discuss boundaries in terms of flexibility of thinking. Just because you happen to think a certain way, it does not have to be an absolute mental or social boundary for you if someone has a different opinion.

I have always considered my job the greatest privilege a human can have, the honour of listening to another’s story and lived experience, and I cannot think of a single person who hasn’t opened my mind or broadened my view in some way.

We can model this idea that human stories broaden our minds, with children.  We can model behaviour and language in our house that shows that we as adults are open to learning and to changing our minds, in response to that learning. Rigidity of thinking is not a good display of boundaries, it is simply the inability to acknowledge another’s experience, it’s important to show children that being a “humble student” doesn’t mean being a doormat, it means being open to change.

About Dr Alison McClymont

Dr Alison McClymont is a leading child psychologist with over a decades worth of experience at the forefront of children’s mental health. Keep up to date with her on social media @AlisonMcClymontInsta.

People photo created by freepik – www.freepik.com

6 comments

  1. This is indeed a great reminder especially for first time parents. Setting boundaries is really a need and better to establish it while kids are still young.

  2. I believe that more than ever we need to teach these healthy bonds to children to make them understand how healthy, kind and genuine relationships can make their life better.

  3. It is wonderful that you have posted this… My family never taught me about boundaries when I was young but they did teach me to be nice (which is fine, but if you have one without the other, you are in for a lifetime fo being taken advantage of!). It takes a long time to relearn things so best to give our children the service of teaching them while they are still little.

  4. This is such an important topic to talk about with your kids. If they don’t know about boundaries, they won’t know when people are crossing them.

  5. Good tips and explanations to consider. I think that times are very much changing and humans are learning about their autonomy at younger and younger ages.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.