Boundaries with Kids: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Children

The wise parent lets the child’s world teach him the lessons of life and then empathizes with his pain. Then he learns to respect the outside world’s limits as well as his parents

Begin with the end in mind,” says Stephen Covey in his best-selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Beginning with the end in mind is a trait of people who do well. It is also a trait of people who parent well. When we understand that a major goal of parents is to develop a person of good character, we have gotten closer to that goal.

Is your home a retreat from responsibility, or a place of movement and growth?

Encourage your child to think for himself, disagree, and talk about his feelings while accepting your authority.

Children raised with good boundaries learn that they are not only responsible for their lives, but also free to live their lives any way they choose, as long as they take responsibility for their choices. For the responsible adult, the sky is the limit.

With reactive boundaries, you fight the friend who constantly bugs you. With proactive boundaries, you decide you don’t need that kind of a friend.

1. Whose problem is this? 2. What can I do to help him experience the problem? 3. What am I doing to keep him from experiencing the problem?

Remember that parenting is a temporary job, not an identity. Kids with parents who have a life learn both hat they aren't the center of the universe and that they can be free to pursue their own dreams.

Mature, healthy people need other people; they don't isolate themselves...Needing love isn't being immature. Rather, it gives us the energy we need to go out and slay our dragons.

Be careful not to give your child the impression that you love her perfect, performing parts more than you do her mediocre, stumbling parts.

A boundary is a "property line" that defines a person; it defines where one person ends and someone else begins.

Other children communicate with actions, such as tantrums, yelling, name-calling, and running away. The trick is to disallow this form of expression and encourage verbal communication. “I want to know what you are feeling, but I want to hear you tell me instead of show me.

A child needs to internalize a model of someone who has a life of her own. The parent whose life is centered around her children is influencing them to think that life is about either becoming a parent or being forever served by a parent. Let your child know you have interests and relationships that don’t involve her. Take trips without her. Show her that you take active responsibility in meeting your own needs and solving your own problems.

If a person’s character makeup determines his future, then child rearing is primarily about helping children to develop character that will take them through life safely, securely, productively, and joyfully.

It's hard to give up playing God when you've been doing it a long time.

Our kids aren’t an annuity for our retirement, social system, or medical frailty.

strict. But the real issue is this: Is what you are doing being done on purpose? Or are you doing it from reasons that you do not think about, such as your own personality, childhood, need of the moment, or fears? Remember, parenting has to do with more than the present. You are preparing your child for the future. A person’s character is one’s destiny

In fact, to the extent that you can be separate from someone is the extent to which you can truly love him or her.

Children hide from relational consequences more than the known logical consequences of their behavior.

When you are a parent, you help create a child's future.

Safe people will help you help your child.

God designed the universe according to his nature, life works better when we do it his way. When we are caring, responsible, and attuned to him, we have a better prospect of a good life. Reality is on your side. It is constructed so that immaturity causes your child some discomfort; ownership should bring some measure of satisfaction and fulfillment. Allow your child to experience both realities so as to learn boundaries: “Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor” (Proverbs 12:24).

Direct communication is the best way to go through life. But many people do not deal with others in that fashion. Instead, they practice avoidance (ignoring the person or the problem) or triangulation (bringing in a third person) or overlooking.

This is a perfect picture of what you want to develop in the soul of your child: a desire to do the right things and to avoid the wrong ones because of empathic concern for others and because of a healthy respect for the demands of God’s reality.

Parents get into trouble when they don’t empathize with their child’s pain. They either overidentify with the pain of the child and give in, or they get angry at the child’s pain and go to war. Empathy and keeping the limit is the answer for both extremes.

Proactive boundaries go beyond problem identification to problem solving. Your child needs to know that in protesting, she has only identified the problem, not solved it. A tantrum doesn’t solve anything. She needs to use these feelings to motivate her to action, to address the issue at hand. She should think about her responses and choose the best one available.

Frustration is a key ingredient to growth. The child who is never frustrated never develops frustration tolerance.

We parent in the present without thinking about the future. We usually deal with the problems at hand. Making it through an afternoon without wanting to send our children to an eight-year camp in Alaska seems like a huge accomplishment! But one goal of parenting is to keep an eye on the future. We are raising our children to be responsible adults.

Children don’t learn this from a book. Kids learn about loving and rescuing at home. When your child sees that Mom, Dad, and his siblings don’t need him to parent them, he learns that he can love others without taking responsibility for them. He can enter freely into relationships knowing that he can obey the Law of Empathy but can also say no to those things that aren’t good for him or are someone else’s burden. Let him skin his knee and get up and get the Band-Aids without your rushing over to coddle him. Let him observe you having a bad day, but know that you’ll take care of yourself. As you help your child learn the difference between loving and rescuing, he will also be learning how to pick kids who don’t need someone to take on their problems: kids of good character, kids to whom your child can say no without fear of losing the connection.