💪🏼Boundaries are our way of laying the ground rules, or the parameters, that WE are comfortable with. Boundaries are ultimately about the things WE can control.
🧠Think of it like a physical space, like a video game- boundaries are the coded rules and barriers of a space. We are aware of them from the beginning, they’re consistent, and they don’t change based on our behavior. We can interact with them, we can push them, we can complain about them, but they do not change.
🤯On the other hand, if a rule changes based on our behavior (Ex: “you were rude in the car, no TV today”) then that boundary is no longer clear or dependable. It’s not conditional on a child’s behavior but is also conditional on *our feelings and emotions as adults*.
💪🏼For me, having clear boundaries not only helps my child but it helps ME fall back on the clear rules and boundaries I’ve already set, so that I don’t contradict myself or make an impulsive decision based on my own dysregulation.
🫠Of course, the tough thing about boundaries is that we can only prove they exist by *enforcing them*. An invisible wall in a video game only exists if we run into it to prove it’s there. Similarly, a child can only know our boundaries are real and enforced by testing them and ensuring we will enforce them.
🙈If we place the responsibility of enforcing a boundary on our child, we are asking them to do *our job* and that may not be appropriate given their age or development.
🔥ALL families are different! All children and brains are different. Some of my “not boundaries” examples could still be useful for some families especially with kids who need a bit more responsibility or feeling of choice. We may start by strictly enforcing a time limit and then try saying “ok time to turn it off!” and it may work fine! That might mean our child has learned the boundary well enough that they can now enforce it themselves- that’s great! That’s a skill we want them to have as they grow. But if we find ourselves getting into a power struggle it may be a sign that we may have to step in and reinforce that boundary, even temporarily.
