Culturally, the pendulum has swung from focusing on children’s behavior (in previous generations) to focusing on children’s emotions (today). With this, however, there has been an exponential rise in anxiety disorders in children and teens1. Although it’s extremely important for children’s emotions to be heard and validated, a parent still needs to be in charge to create a secure and stable environment for their kids. In particular, parents are responsible for setting boundaries in the household, in order to foster an environment where their children can be heard, but also encouraged to develop patience, self-awareness, and so on. Parents should not value a child’s self-expression over a child’s sense of security. Setting boundaries doesn’t make you a mean or unfair parent, even if your child says that to you at the time, out of anger. When a child tries to negotiate a later bed time this comes at a cost of the child’s sense of security because it allows the child to feel he or she has more power than the adult. School-aged children from eight to eleven years of age are largely concrete in their thinking. This is why elementary kids love rules and often like the world to be black and white. After all, structure ensures predictability and security. It is only after age 12 that children begin to develop more abstract and nuanced thinking. This is why adolescence is a more appropriate time to experiment with rules and limits. Yet parents still need to be “in charge” of setting boundaries with their teenage children, as they are still developing the prefrontal controls around impulsivity, decision making, and problem-solving (never mind all the hormonal shifts!). Even as we know more about brain development, we seem to have become less attuned to thinking about our children’s unique developmental stage, and what is an appropriate level of choice for them to have. Many parents today negotiate with their five year-olds as if they are mini-adults; thinking kids understand all the gradations of why rules change and shift. Yet unless the early-development narcissism is eventually disrupted, children continue to feel like the world revolves around them and become narcissistic adults. Parental boundaries allow children to grow up, to understand they can’t always get their way, to be more patient and mature. Knowing that there is a limit to how much comfort and pleasure their parents will provide, children can learn to cope with disappointment; as an added bonus, the mild disappointment often brought about by boundaries can also help children to develop empathy — perhaps for others who have discomfort and disappointment. Understanding the meaning of “limits” allows kids to be more connected to the real world. It’s OK and perfectly appropriate for a parent’s rationale to stop at this: “I am making this decision because I’m the parent, and you’re the child.” The notion of a parent being “in charge” is not a power-trip if done in a gentle but firm way to promote a child’s feeling of safety and security. Parents who set boundaries are not trying to make their child happy in the moment (though sometimes they are!). Rather, more importantly, they are trying to have their child develop skills to successfully launch into the world at 18.
