Set Your Child Up for Success by Teaching Them Healthy Boundaries by Jessica Chapman
Success can mean many different things to many different people, but no matter what goals or standards you set for yourself, success in achieving them gives you confidence and a sense of wellbeing. Success doesn't come by chance, though, implying that it is your obligation to go for it and success and healthy boundaries go hand in hand. This applies in every life aspect right from childhood to adulthood.
As a parent, there are simple things you can always do to set your child up for success. One of the simplest ways of achieving this is teaching your little ones healthy boundaries. The boundaries, in this case, define the rules, guidelines, or even limits that you create for the child. These guidelines or limits help them identify safe, permissible, and reasonable ways to relate to or behave towards other people and respect themselves and can only help in setting them up for success as they grow.
How do you Set Healthy Boundaries with Children?
If you are a first-time parent, setting healthy boundaries for your child may be mind-boggling. Nonetheless, it is important that you teach them healthy boundaries so your child may grow up and become more independent. This way, it will be easy for them to think for themselves and, in turn, make better, more informed choices. Here are a few more ways teaching healthy boundaries can benefit your child.
Boundaries can help them know who's in charge
Teaching healthy boundaries to your child helps ensure that they know who is in charge at any given time. This will provide them a sense of security and can ease anxiety in certain settings.
A perfect example is a case where a child feels like they have the power to convince their caregivers or parents to always do anything they may want to do, at any time and the way they want to do it. While this may seem like making your child feel good, not setting boundaries can create a sense of entitlement.
You may not notice this as a parent, but the feeling of dominating other people who should be in charge will make the youngster feel insecure and anxious, something which is not healthy for their development. As a basic rule of thumb, you as the parent must exert some sense of authority and not the other way round.
Conflict Management
Managing a child who talks back to you can be one of the most challenging discipline issues often faced as a parent. Backtalk isn't something that comes with a specific age, as a child may develop it at any age for various reasons like when they need attention. Whilst it can be considered part of a child's development, it doesn't necessarily make it is easier to deal with. However, teaching healthy boundaries for your child may make managing this easier because it allows you to set limits.
By setting limits, you get to reduce arguments or, better off, eliminate them greatly. Do note that even though setting limits may help, it doesn't imply that the child will not attempt to get things done the way they want the things to be done. They might still try, but by setting the limits, the child will at least know the boundaries. You can always remind them of these limits when they try talking back.
Boundaries, in this case, are like consequences. By establishing the rules and being clear on the consequences for flouting the rules, you will find it less difficult to gradually reduce the push-backs from your child as they get used to modifying their behavior to suit the settings around them.
Shun Self-entitlement and Narcissism
By not creating healthy boundaries and setting limits for your children, they can develop feelings of self-entitlement and narcissism. Boundaries help eliminate the thought that things and people in their surroundings are there to fulfill their wants at any time and meet their needs only. By not setting healthy boundaries in this capacity, they will only get nasty surprises whenever they fail to get whatever they want or the way they want them, which isn’t how things work in life.
With that in mind, here's a breakdown of some of the things you can do to set healthy boundaries for your child.
Insist on Emotional Intelligence and Self Confidence
Healthy boundaries avoid treating other people and objects around us like things that are there just to fulfill our needs. They also often demand that we be respectful of others and confident in our needs, desires, and, most importantly, opinions.
To build this confidence in your children, you will need to make them understand how they can identify the things they need, their limits, and the interactions they're comfortable with. As a parent, you can cultivate your child's emotional intelligence by talking with the child about emotions. During these open and honest discussions, be sure to use age-appropriate terms they can relate to. Be sure also to encourage them to talk about their feelings without feeling ashamed about them.
Make them understand that it's Fine to Say 'No'
'No' is one of the first few words your child will learn as they grow. It is also a skill that they must learn since it applies to all forms of personal boundaries, including material, physical, emotional, and mental boundaries.
Even though saying 'No' can help you safeguard your personal boundaries, it may also cause some discomfort, which may make the child feel bad about themselves or other people in some scenarios.
Therefore, when training your child on the best way to say 'No,' your best bet is that you'd need to lead by example, practicing it early with the child. You may like to go through different scenarios with the child so they can feel comfortable with saying no.
It would also help if when you practice saying 'No' with your child, you follow-up with open discussions about how the child may need to react when they're the ones being told 'No.' This is important because rejections are part of life, and not everything will go your way always.
To avoid rejection feelings when told 'No,' you will need to make your child understand the situation from the other party's viewpoint. This way, the child will understand that the other person's 'No' should also be respected and acknowledged.
Cultivate Effective Communication
Besides teaching emotional intelligence and helping your child learn how to say 'No,' it would also help if you also help them understand the best ways to express their needs and opinions without necessarily hurting others. You can achieve this by ensuring that you model the child's behavior in line with how you want them to behave. Be firm but fair when speaking to them but do so in friendly and kind tones. The same would apply when disciplining them.
Teaching healthy boundaries will, without any doubt, set up your child for success. The way you approach this aspect, though, is crucial. We hope these tips will make it easy for you to set the boundaries for your youngster.
Jessica Chapman, a writing editor from Chicago. She is an expert writer who has worked with companies offering writing essays for money. She is experienced in various fields in essay writing including admission essay writing service. When not into writing, Jessica enjoys sports and travelling.