Shannon couldn’t stop crying. A young mother of two preschool children, she couldn’t imagine herself being angry, out of control, and certainly not abusive. Yet a week ago, she had picked up three-year-old Robby and shaken him. Hard. She had screamed at him. Loudly. And it wasn’t the first time. She had done it numerous times in the past year. The only difference was that this time, Shannon almost physically injured her son. She was frightened.
The experience had so shaken Shannon and her husband, Gerald, that they called and made an appointment with me to discuss what had happened. Her shame and guilt were intense. She avoided eye contact with me as she told her story.
The several hours before Shannon had lost control with Robby had been horrible. Gerald and she had had an argument over breakfast. He had left for work without saying good-bye. Then one-year-old Tanya spilled cereal all over the floor. And Robby chose that morning to do everything he’d been told not to for the past three years. He pulled the cat’s tail. He figured out how to open the front door, and he ran outside into the yard and into the street. He smeared Shannon’s lipstick all over the white dining room wall, and he pushed Tanya to the floor.
This last incident was the straw that broke Shannon’s back. Seeing Tanya lying on the floor, crying, with Robby standing over her with a defiantly pleased look, was too much. Shannon saw red and impulsively ran to her son. You know the rest of the story.
After she had calmed down a little, I asked Shannon how she and Gerald normally disciplined Robby.
“Well, we don’t want to alienate Robby, or quench his spirit,” Gerald began. “Being negative is so … so … negative. So we try to reason with him. Sometimes we’ll warn him that ‘you won’t get ice cream tonight.’ Sometimes we try to praise good things he does. And sometimes we try to ignore the bad behavior. Then maybe he’ll stop it.”
“Doesn’t he push the limits?”
Both parents nodded. “You wouldn’t believe it,” Shannon said. “It’s like he doesn’t hear us. He keeps on doing what he jolly well pleases. And generally, he’ll keep it up until one of us explodes and yells at him. I guess we just have a problem child.”
“Well, there’s certainly a problem,” I replied. “But perhaps Robby has been trained to not respond to anything but out-of-control rage. Let’s talk about boundaries and kids… .”
Of all the areas in which boundaries are crucially important, none is more relevant than that of raising children. How we approach boundaries and child rearing will have enormous impact on the characters of our kids. On how they develop values. On how well they do in school. On the friends they pick. On whom they marry. And on how well they do in a career.
God, at his deepest level, is a lover (1 John 4:8). He is relationally oriented and relationally driven. He desires connection with us from womb to tomb: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). God’s loving nature isn’t passive. It’s active. Love multiplies itself. God the relational Lover is also God the aggressive Creator. He wants to fill up his universe with beings who care for him—and for each other.
The family is the social unit God invented to fill up the world with representatives of his loving character. It’s a place for nurturing and developing babies until they’re mature enough to go out of the family as adults and to multiply his image in other surroundings.
God first picked the nation Israel to be his children. After centuries of resistance by Israel, however, God chose the church: “Because of [Israel’s] transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious” (Rom. 11:11). The body of Christ has the same role as Israel had—to multiply God’s love and character.
The church is often described as a family. We are to do good “especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Gal. 6:10). Believers “are members of God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). We are to “know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household” (1 Tim. 3:15).
These and many other powerful passages show us how God “thinks family.” He explains his heart as a parent would. He’s a daddy. He likes his job. This biblical portrayal of God helps show us how parenting is such a vital part of bringing God’s own character to this planet in our own little ones.
God, the good parent, wants to help us, his children, grow up. He wants to see us “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Part of this maturing process is helping us know how to take responsibility for our lives.
It’s the same with our own flesh-and-blood kids. Second only to learning how to bond, to form strong attachments, the most important thing parents can give children is a sense of responsibility—knowing what they are responsible for and knowing what they aren’t responsible for, knowing how to say no and knowing how to accept no. Responsibility is a gift of enormous value.
We’ve all been around middle-aged people who have the boundaries of an eighteen-month-old. They have tantrums or sulk when others set limits on them, or they simply fold and comply with others just to keep the peace. Remember that these adult people started off as little people. They learned long, long ago to either fear or hate boundaries. The relearning process for adults is laborious.
A wise mother of adult children once watched her younger friend struggle with her youngster. The child was refusing to behave, and the young mother was quickly losing her mind. Affirming the mother’s decision to make the child sit on a chair by himself, the older woman said, “Do it now, Dear. Discipline the child now—and you just might survive adolescence.”
Developing boundaries in young children is that proverbial ounce of prevention. If we teach responsibility, limit setting, and delay of gratification early on, the smoother our children’s later years of life will be. The later we start, the harder we and they have to work.
If you’re a parent of older children, don’t lose heart. It just means boundary development will be met with more resistance. In their minds, they do not have a lot to gain by learning boundaries. You’ll need to spend more time working on it, getting more support from friends—and praying harder! We’ll review age-appropriate boundary tasks for the different stages of childhood later in this chapter.
The work of boundary development in children is the work of learning responsibility. As we teach them the merits and limits of responsibility, we teach them autonomy—we prepare them to take on the tasks of adulthood.
The Scriptures have much to say about the role of boundary setting in child rearing. Usually, we call it discipline. The Hebrew and Greek words that scholars translate as “discipline” mean “teaching.” This teaching has both a positive and a negative slant.
The positive facets of discipline are proactivity, prevention, and instruction. Positive discipline is sitting someone down to educate and train him in a task: fathers are to raise children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The negative facets of discipline are correction, chastisement, and consequences. Negative discipline is letting children suffer the results of their actions to learn a lesson in responsibility: “Stern discipline awaits him who leaves the path” (Prov. 15:10).
Good child rearing involves both preventive training and practice, and correctional consequences. For example, you set a ten o’clock bedtime for your fourteen-year-old. “It’s there so that you’ll get enough sleep to be alert in school,” you tell her. You’ve just disciplined positively. Then your teen dawdles until 11:30 p.m. The next day you say, “Because you did not get to bed on time last night, you may not use the phone today.” You’ve just disciplined negatively.
Why are both the carrot and the whip necessary in good boundary development? Because God uses practice—trial and error—to help us grow up. We learn maturity by getting information, applying it poorly, making mistakes, learning from our mistakes, and doing better the next time.
Practice is necessary in all areas of life: in learning to ski, write an essay, or operate a computer. We need practice in developing a deep love relationship and in learning to study the Bible. And it’s just as true in our spiritual and emotional growth: “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14). Practice is important in learning boundaries and responsibility. Our mistakes are our teachers.
Discipline is an external boundary, designed to develop internal boundaries in our children. It provides a structure of safety until the child has enough structure in his character to not need it. Good discipline always moves the child toward more internal structure and more responsibility.
We need to distinguish between discipline and punishment. Punishment is payment for wrongdoing. Legally, it’s paying a penalty for breaking the law. Punishment doesn’t leave a lot of room for practice, however. It’s not a great teacher. The price is too high: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). Punishment does not leave much room for mistakes.
Discipline, however, is different. Discipline is not payment for a wrong. It’s the natural law of God: our actions reap consequences.
Discipline is different from punishment because God is finished punishing us. Punishment ended on the cross for all those who accept Christ as Savior: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Christ’s suffering paid for our wrongdoing.
In addition, discipline and punishment have a different relationship to time. Punishment looks back. It focuses on making payment for wrongs done in the past. Christ’s suffering was payment, for example, for our sin. Discipline, however, looks forward. The lessons we learn from discipline help us to not make the same mistakes again: “God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness” (Heb. 12:10).
How does that help us? It frees us to make mistakes without fear of judgment, without fear of loss of relationship: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). The freedom of the cross allows us to practice without having to pay a terrible price. The only danger is consequences—not isolation and judgment.
Take, for example, the mother who tells her ten-year-old, “You smart off again, and I won’t love you anymore.” The youngster is immediately in a no-win situation. She can either rebel and lose her most important relationship in life, or she can comply and become externally obedient, losing any chance of practicing confrontational skills. Now, compare that response with this, “I’ll never stop loving you. That’s a constant in my heart. However, if you smart off again you’ve lost your boom box for three days.” The relationship is still intact. There’s no condemnation. And the child gets an opportunity to choose responsibility or suffer consequences—with no risk of losing love and safety. This is the way to maturity, to learning to eat solid food: the safe practice of discipline.
What specific needs do boundaries meet in our kids? Limit-setting abilities have several important jobs that will pay enormous dividends throughout life.
Self-Protection
Have you ever seen anything more helpless than the human infant? Human babies are less able to take care of themselves than animal babies. God designed the newborn months as a means for the mother and father (or another caregiver) to connect deeply with their infant, knowing that without their minute-by-minute care, the baby would not survive. All this time and energy translates into an enduring attachment, in which the child learns to feel safe in the world.
God’s program of maturation, however, doesn’t stop there. Mom and Dad can’t always be there to care and provide. The task of protection needs to ultimately pass on to the children. When they grow up, they need to protect themselves.
Boundaries are our way of protecting and safeguarding our souls. Boundaries are designed to keep the good in and the bad out. And skills such as saying no, telling the truth, and maintaining physical distance need to be developed in the family structure to allow the child to take on the responsibility of self-protection.
Consider the following two twelve-year-old boys:
Jimmy is talking with his parents at the dinner table. “Guess what—some kids wanted me to smoke pot with them. When I told them I didn’t want to, they said I was a sissy. I told them they were dumb. I like some of them, but if they can’t like me because I don’t smoke pot, I guess they aren’t really my friends.”
Paul comes home after school with red eyes, slurred speech, and coordination difficulties. When asked by his concerned parents what is wrong, he denies everything until, finally, he blurts out, “Everybody’s doing it. Why do you hate my friends?”
Both Jimmy and Paul come from Christian homes with lots of love and an adherence to biblical values. Why did they turn out so differently? Jimmy’s family allowed disagreements between parent and child and gave him practice in the skill of boundary setting, even with them. Jimmy’s mom would be holding and hugging her two-year-old when he would get fidgety. He’d say, “Down,” meaning, “Let me get a little breathing space, Ma.” Fighting her own impulses to hold on to her child, she would set him down on the floor and say, “Wanna play with your trucks?”
Jimmy’s dad used the same philosophy. When wrestling with his son on the floor, he tried to pay attention to Jimmy’s limits. When the going got too rough, or when Jimmy was tired, he could say, “Stop, Daddy,” and Dad would get up. They’d go to another game.
Jimmy was receiving boundary training. He was learning that when he was scared, in discomfort, or wanted to change things, he could say no. This little word gave him a sense of power in his life. It took him out of a helpless or compliant position. And Jimmy could say it without receiving an angry and hurt response, or a manipulative countermove, such as, “But Jimmy, Mommy needs to hold you now, okay?”
Jimmy learned from infancy on that his boundaries were good and that he could use them to protect himself. He learned to resist things that weren’t good for him.
A hallmark of Jimmy’s family was permission to disagree. When, for example, Jimmy would fight his parents about his bedtime, they never withdrew or punished him for disagreeing. Instead, they would listen to his reasoning, and, if it seemed appropriate, they would change their minds. If not, they would maintain their boundaries.
Jimmy was also given a vote in some family matters. When family night out would come up, his parents listened to his opinion on whether they should go to a movie, play board games, or play basketball. Was this a family with no limits? On the contrary! It was a family who took boundary setting seriously—as a skill to develop in its children.
This was good practice for resisting in the evil day (Eph. 5:16), when some of Jimmy’s friends turned on him and pressured him to take drugs. How was Jimmy able to refuse? Because by then, he’d had ten or eleven years of practice disagreeing with people who were important to him without losing their love. He didn’t fear abandonment in standing up against his friends. He’d done it many times successfully with his family with no loss of love.
Paul, on the other hand, came from a different family setting. In his home, no had two different responses. His mom would be hurt and withdraw and pout. She would send guilt messages, such as “How can you say no to your mom who loves you?” His dad would get angry, threaten him, and say things like, “Don’t talk back to me, Mister.”
It didn’t take long for Paul to learn that to have his way, he had to be externally compliant. He developed a strong yes on the outside, seeming to agree with his family’s values and control. Whatever he thought about a subject—the dinner menu, TV restrictions, church choices, clothes, or curfews—he stuffed inside.
Once, when he had tried to resist his mother’s hug, she had immediately withdrawn from him, pushing him away with the words, “Someday you’ll feel sorry for hurting your mother’s feelings like that.” Day by day, Paul was being trained to not set limits.
As a result of his learned boundarylessness, Paul seemed to be a content, respectful son. The teens, however, are a crucible for kids. We find out what kind of character has actually been built into our children during this difficult passage.
Paul folded. He gave in to his friends’ pressure. Is it any wonder that the first people he said no to were his parents—at twelve years old? Resentment and the years of not having boundaries were beginning to erode the compliant, easy-to-live-with false self he’d developed to survive.
Taking Responsibility for One’s Needs
The group therapy session I was leading was quiet. I’d just asked Janice an unanswerable question. The question was, “What do you need?” She looked confused, became thoughtful, and sat back in her chair.
Janice had just described a week of painful loss: her husband had made moves to separate, her kids were out of control, and her job was in jeopardy. The concern on the faces of the group members, who were all working on issues of attachment and safety, was evident. Yet no one knew quite how to help. So when I asked the question, I was asking it for all of us. But Janice couldn’t answer.
This was typical of Janice’s background. She’d spent most of her childhood taking responsibility for her parents’ feelings. The peacemaker of the house, she was always smoothing over the ruffled feathers of either parent, with soothing words like, “Mom, I’m sure Dad didn’t mean to blow up at you—he’s had a rough day.”
The result of such unbiblical responsibility toward her family was clear in Janice’s life: a sense of overresponsibility for others and a lack of attunement toward her own needs. Janice had radar out for the hurts of others; but the radar pointed her way was broken. It was no wonder she couldn’t answer my question. Janice didn’t understand her own God-given, legitimate needs. She had no vocabulary for this thinking.
The story does, however, have a happy ending. One of the group members said, “If I were in your shoes, I know what I’d need. I’d really need to know that you people in this room cared for me, that you didn’t see me as a colossal, shameful failure, and that you’d pray for me and let me call you on the phone this week for support.”
Janice’s eyes began watering. Something about her friend’s empathic statement touched her in a place she couldn’t herself touch. And she allowed the comfort that comes from others who have been comforted to take its place inside her (2 Cor. 1:4).
Janice’s story illustrates the second fruit of boundary development in our children: the ability to take ownership of, or responsibility for, our own needs. God intends for us to know when we’re hungry, lonely, in trouble, overwhelmed, or in need of a break—and then to take initiative to get what we need. The Scriptures present Jesus as understanding this point when he left a crowd of people in a boat in a time of great ministry and need: “because so many people were coming and going that [he and his disciples] did not even have a chance to eat” (Mark 6:31).
Boundaries play a primary role in this process. Our limits create a spiritual and emotional space, a separateness, between ourselves and others. This allows our needs to be heard and understood. Without a solid sense of boundaries, it becomes difficult to filter out our needs from those of others. There is too much static in the relationship.
When children can be taught to experience their own needs, as opposed to those of others, they have been given a genuine advantage in life. They are able to better avoid the burnout that comes from not taking care of one’s self.
How can we help our children experience their own individual needs? The best thing a parent can do is to encourage verbal expression of those needs, even when they don’t “go with the family flow.” When children have permission to ask for something that goes against the grain—even though they might not receive it—they develop a sense of what they need.
Below are some ways you can help your children:
The first aspect of taking ownership over one’s needs, then, is to identify them. That’s where our spiritual radar comes in. Janice’s radar was broken and undeveloped, and she wasn’t able to identify her needs.
The second aspect of taking ownership is to initiate responsible caretaking for ourselves—as opposed to placing the burden on someone else. We must allow our children to experience the painful consequences of their own irresponsibility and mistakes. This is the “training” of Hebrews 5:14 and the “discipline” of Hebrews 12. By the time they are ready to leave home, our children should have internalized a deep sense of personal responsibility for their lives. They should hold these convictions:
This sense of “my life is up to me” is founded in God’s concern that we take responsibility for our lives. He wants us to use our talents in productive ways, as Jesus discussed in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30). And this sense of responsibility will follow us all through our adult lives—and even beyond the grave, at the judgment seat of Christ.
You can imagine how well not taking ownership over our lives will come across to the Lord then: “But I had a dysfunctional family.” “But I was lonely.” “But I didn’t have much energy.” The rationalizing “buts” will have as much impact as the excuses of the servant in the parable of the talents did. This isn’t to say that we aren’t deeply influenced for better or worse by our backgrounds and our various stressors. We certainly are. But we are ultimately responsible for what we do with our injured, immature souls.
Wise parents allow their children to undergo “safe suffering.” “Safe suffering” means allowing a child to experience age-appropriate consequences. Allowing a six-year-old to go outside after dark isn’t training her for adulthood. She is making decisions that she doesn’t have the maturity to make. She shouldn’t be placed in a position of making these choices in the first place.
Pat’s parents allowed their daughter to experience safe suffering. At the start of senior high, they gave Pat an entire semester’s allowance. Pat was responsible for paying for her school meals, clothing, social outings, and extracurricular activities. The amount was enough for this and a little more. On the surface it looked like a teenager’s dream—all this money and no restrictions on how she spent it!
The first semester Pat bought some beautiful outfits. She went out to lots of functions with her friends. And she even treated them several times. That lasted for about one month out of the three and a half. The next two and a half months were lean ones. Pat stayed home a lot, saving her remaining money for school lunches, and she wore her new outfits over and over again.
The next semester was better—and by the beginning of her sophomore year, she had established a bank account and a workable budget. Pat was developing boundaries. Normally a budding shopping addict, she began saying no to clothes, CDs, food, and magazines that normally would have been a minimum requirement for her. She began learning to take responsibility for her own life. And she didn’t end up like many college graduates who, after years of having someone else bail them out, can’t cook, clean, or keep a checkbook balanced.
It’s important to tie consequences as closely to the actions of the child as possible. This best replicates real life.
Homework projects are another area in which parents can either help the child take on responsibility—or create the illusion of the eternal, omnipresent parent who will always take up the slack. It’s difficult when your child comes to you tearfully, saying, “I have a ten-page report due tomorrow—and I just started.” Our impulse, as loving parents, is to bail them out by doing the research, or the organization, or the typing. Or all three.
Why do we do this? Because we love our kids. We long for the best for them just as God longs for the best for us. And yet, just as God allows us to experience our failures, we may need to let our kids mar a good report card with a bad grade. This is often the consequence of not planning ahead.
Having a Sense of Control and Choice
“I won’t go to the dentist—and you can’t make me go!” Pamela stamped her eleven-year-old feet and scowled at her father, Sal, who was waiting at the front door.
There had been a time when Sal would have reacted in a knee-jerk fashion to Pamela’s power move. He would have said something like, “Well, we’ll see about that!” and physically dragged the screaming child into the car.
However, lots of family counseling and reading up on these issues had prepared Sal for the inevitable. Calmly he said to her, “You’re absolutely right, Honey. I can’t make you go to the dentist. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. But remember our rule: if you choose not to go, you’re also choosing not to go to the party tomorrow night. I’ll certainly respect either decision. Shall I cancel your appointment?”
Pamela looked perplexed and thought a minute. Then, slowly, she replied, “I’ll go. But I’m not going because I have to.” Pamela was right. She was choosing to go to her appointment because she wanted to attend the party.
Children need to have a sense of control and choice in their lives. They need to see themselves not as the dependent, helpless pawns of parents, but as choosing, willing, initiative-taking agents of their own lives.
Children begin life in a helpless, dependent fashion. Godly parenting, however, seeks to help children learn to think, make decisions, and master their environment in all aspects of life. This runs the gamut of deciding what to wear in the morning to what courses to take in school. Learning to make age-appropriate decisions helps children have a sense of security and control in their lives.
Anxious and well-meaning parents attempt to prevent their children from making painful decisions. They shield them from fouling up and skinning their knees. Their motto is, “Here, let me decide that for you.” The result is that kids become atrophied in a very important part of the image of God that should be developing in their character: their assertion, or change-making abilities. Children need a sense that their lives, their destinies are largely theirs to determine, within the province of God’s sovereignty. This helps them weigh choices, rather than avoid them. They learn to appreciate the consequences of choices made, rather than resenting the choices made for them.
Delaying Gratification of Goals
The word now was made for young children. It’s where they live. Try telling a two-year-old she can have dessert tomorrow. She doesn’t buy it. That means “never” to her. Newborns, in fact, don’t have the capacity to understand “later.” That’s why a six-month-old panics when Mom leaves the room. He is convinced that she is irrevocably gone forever.
Yet, sometime in our development we learn the value of “later,” of delaying one good for a greater good. We call this skill delay of gratification. It’s the ability to say no to our impulses, wishes, and desires for some gain down the road.
The Scriptures place great value on this ability. God uses this skill to help us see the benefits of planning and preparing. Jesus is our prime example, “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).
Generally, this skill isn’t relevant until after the first year of life, as bonding needs take precedence during that time. However, teaching delay of gratification can begin quickly by the beginning of the second year. Dessert comes after carrots, not before.
Older children also need to learn this skill. The family can’t buy certain clothes or recreational items until later in the year. Again, the boundaries developed during this process are invaluable later in life. They can prevent a child from becoming an adult who is a broken, chaotic, impulse-driven slave to Madison Avenue. Our children can become like ants, who are self-sufficient, instead of sluggards, who are always in crisis (Prov. 6:6–11).
Learning how to delay gratification helps children have a goal orientation. They learn to save time and money for things that are important to them, and they value what they have chosen to buy. One family I know had the son save up his money for his first car. He began with a plan, with Dad’s help, when he was thirteen. When all his weekend and summer jobs finally paid off in a car when he was sixteen, he treated that car like it was fine china—you could eat lunch off the hood. He had counted the cost, and valued the result (Luke 14:28).
Respecting the Limits of Others
From an early age, children need to be able to accept the limits of parents, siblings, and friends. They need to know that others don’t always want to play with them, that others may not want to watch the same TV shows they want, and that others may want to eat dinner at a different restaurant than they do. They need to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them.
This is important for a couple of reasons. First, the ability to learn to accept limits teaches us to take responsibility for ourselves. Knowing that others are not always available for us, at our beck and call, helps us to become inwardly directed instead of externally driven. It helps us carry our own knapsack.
Have you ever been around a child who can’t hear no, who keeps whining, cajoling, throwing a tantrum, or pouting till he gets his way? The problem is, the longer we hate and resist the limits of others, the more dependent we will be on others. We expect others to take care of us, rather than simply taking care of ourselves.
At any rate, God has constructed life itself to teach us this law. It’s the only way we can live on this planet together. Sooner or later, someone will say a no to us that we can’t ignore. It’s built into the fabric of life. Observe the progression of nos in the life of the person who resists others’ limits:
Some people learn to accept boundaries early in life, even as early as stage number one. But some people have to go all the way to number eight before they get the picture that we have to accept life’s limits: “Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge” (Prov. 19:27). Many out-of-control adolescents don’t mature until their thirties, when they become tired of not having a steady job and a place to stay. They have to hit bottom financially, and sometimes they may even have to live on the streets for a while. In time, they begin sticking with a career, saving money, and starting to grow up. They gradually begin to accept life’s limits.
No matter how tough we think we are, there’s always someone tougher. If we don’t teach our children to take a no, someone who loves them far less may take on the job. Someone tougher. Someone stronger. And most parents would much rather spare having their children go through this suffering. The earlier we teach limits, the better.
A second, even more important, reason why accepting the limits of others is important for kids is this: Heeding others’ boundaries helps children to love. At its heart, the idea of respecting others’ boundaries is the basis for empathy, or loving others as we’d like to be loved. Children need to be given the grace of having their no respected, and they need to learn to give that same grace to others. As they feel empathy for the needs of others, they mature and deepen in their love for God and others: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Say, for example, that your six-year-old accidentally but carelessly bonks you on the head hard with a softball. To ignore it, or act like it didn’t hurt, is to give the child the feeling that his actions have no impact. He can then avoid any sense of responsibility or awareness of others’ needs or hurts. However, telling him, “I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but that ball really hurt me—try to be a little more careful” helps him see, without condemnation, that he can hurt people he loves and that his actions do matter.
If this principle isn’t taught, it’s difficult for children to grow up as loving people. Frequently, they become self-centered or controlling. At that point, God’s program of maturity is more difficult. A client of mine had been trained by his family to ignore others’ limits. His subsequent manipulation had landed him in jail for stealing. Yet this process, painful though it was, taught him empathy.
“I really never knew that other people had needs and hurts,” he once explained to me. “I was raised to concentrate on Number One. And when I began getting confronted on my lack of respect for others’ needs, something happened inside. A space opened up inside my heart for others. I didn’t ignore my own needs—but for the first time, I saw progress. I actually started feeling guilty about how my actions have hurt my wife and family.”
Did he have a long way to go? Absolutely. But he was on the right road. Learning boundaries later in life was a start to becoming an authentically, biblically loving person.
If this was the first chapter you turned to when you glanced over the table of contents, chances are you’re a parent. Chances are also that you may be experiencing boundary difficulties with your children. Perhaps you’re reading this simply in an effort to prevent problems. But more likely you’re in some pain from which you need relief: Your newborn won’t stop shrieking. Your toddler runs the household. Your elementary school student has behavioral problems at school. Your junior high kid smarts off. Your high schooler is drinking.
All of these issues indicate possible boundary problems. And this section provides an outline on the age-appropriate boundary tasks your children should be learning. As parents, we need to take into consideration our children’s developmental needs and abilities to avoid asking them to do something they can’t do, or to avoid asking too little of them.
Below are the basic tasks for the different stages of childhood. For more detailed information on birth to age three, refer to Chapter 4 on how boundaries are developed in childhood.
Birth to Five Months
At this stage, the newborn needs to establish an attachment with Mother, Dad, or the primary caregiver. A sense of belonging, of being safe and welcome are the tasks the child needs to accomplish. Setting limits is not as much an issue here as providing security for the infant.
The only real boundary here is the soothing presence of the mother. She protects the infant. Mom’s job is to help her newborn contain intense, frightening, and conflicting feelings. Left by themselves, infants are terrorized by their aloneness and lack of internal structure.
For centuries mothers—including Mary, Jesus’ mother—have swaddled their babies, or wrapped cloths tightly around them. While swaddling keeps the baby’s body heat regulated, the tight wrappings also help the infant feel safe—a sort of external boundary. The baby knows where he or she begins and ends. When newborns are undressed, they often panic about the loss of structure around them.
Some well-meaning Christian teachers call for infant training theories that schedule the feeding and holding of infants. These techniques try to teach an infant not to cry or demand comfort because “the child is in control instead of the parent,” or because “that demand is evidence of the child’s selfish, sinful nature.” These theories can be horribly destructive when not understood biblically or developmentally.
The screaming four-month-old child is trying to find out whether the world is a reasonably safe place or not. She is in a state of deep terror and isolation. She hasn’t learned to feel comfort when no one is around. To put her on the parents’ schedule instead of her own for holding and feeding is to “condemn the innocent,” as Jesus said (Matt. 12:7).
These teachers say their programs are biblical because they work. “When I stopped picking her up from her crib at night, my four-month-old stopped crying,” they’ll say. That may be true. But another explanation for the cessation of crying is infant depression, a condition in which the child gives up hope and withdraws. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12).
Teaching delay of gratification shouldn’t begin until after the first year of life, when a foundation of safety has been established between baby and mother. Just as grace always precedes truth (John 1:17), attachment must come before separation.
Five to Ten Months
As we learned in Chapter 4, children in the last half of the first year of life are in the “hatching” phase. They are learning that “Mother and I aren’t the same.” There’s a scary, fascinating world out there that babies literally crawl toward. Though they have tremendous dependency needs, infants are beginning to move out of their oneness with their mom.
To help their children develop good boundaries during this stage, parents need to encourage attempts at separateness, while still being the anchors the child clings to. Allow your child to be fascinated with people and objects other than you. Make your home a safe place for your baby to explore.
Helping your children hatch, however, doesn’t mean neglecting the deep attachment necessary for their internal foundation, their rootedness and groundedness. This is still an infant’s primary work. You need to carefully tend to your child’s needs for bonding and emotional safety, while at the same time allowing the child to look outward, beyond you.
Many mothers find this transition from their child’s love affair with them to the big wide world difficult. The loss of such a deep intimacy is great, especially after the time spent in pregnancy and childbirth. The responsible mother, however, will strive to get her own closeness needs met by other adults in her life. She will encourage the “hatching” of her baby, knowing she is preparing him or her to be equipped to “leave and cleave.”
At this point, most infants don’t yet have the ability to understand and respond appropriately to the word no. Keeping them out of danger by picking them up and removing them from unsafe places is the best route.
Ten to Eighteen Months
At this “practicing” stage, your baby begins not only talking, but also walking—and the possibilities stretch out before her. The world is this child’s oyster—and she spends a lot of time finding ways to open it up and play with it. Now she has the emotional and cognitive ability to understand and respond to the word no.
Boundaries become increasingly important during this stage, both having and hearing limits. Allowing the no muscle to begin developing is crucial at this age. No is your child’s way of finding out whether taking responsibility for her life has good results—or whether no causes someone to withdraw. As parents, learn to rejoice in your baby’s no.
At the same time, you have the delicate task of helping your child see that she is not the center of the universe. There are limits in life. There are consequences for scribbling on doors and screaming in church. Yet you need to do this without quenching the sense of excitement and interest in the world that she has been developing.
Eighteen to Thirty-six Months
The child is now learning the important task of taking responsibility for a separate yet connected soul. The practicing child gives way to the more sober child who is realizing that life has limits, but that being separate does not mean that we can’t be attached. In this phase, the following abilities are goals:
At eighteen to thirty-six months the child needs to learn to be autonomous. She wants to be free of parental rule, but this desire is conflicted by her deep dependence on her parents. The wise parent will help her gain a sense of individualism and accept her loss of omnipotence, but without losing attachment.
To teach a child boundaries at this stage, you need to respect her no whenever appropriate, yet maintain your own firm no. It’s easy for you to try to win all the skirmishes. But there are simply too many. You will end up losing the war because you’ve lost the big picture—the attachment. Don’t waste your energy trying to control a random whirlwind. Pick your battles carefully and choose the important ones to win.
Wise parents will rejoice in children’s fun times, but will consistently and uniformly keep solid limits with the practicing child. At this age, children can learn the rules of the house as well as the consequences for breaking them. One workable process of discipline is listed below:
1. First infraction. Tell the child not to color on the bedsheet. Try to help the child meet her need in another way—using a coloring book or a pad of plain paper to crayon on instead of a bedsheet, for example.
2. Second infraction. Again, tell the child no, and state the consequence. She will need to take a time out for one minute or lose the crayons for the rest of the day.
3. Third infraction. Administer the consequences, explaining why, then give the child a few minutes to be angry and separate from parents.
4. Comfort and reconnection. Hold and comfort the child, helping her reattach with you. This helps her differentiate between consequences and a loss of love. Painful consequences should never include a loss of connection.
Three to Five Years
During this phase, children move into a period of sex-role development. Each child identifies with the same-sex parent. Little boys want to be like Dad, and little girls like Mom. They also develop competitive feelings toward that same parent, wishing to marry the opposite-sex parent, defeating the same-sex parent in the process. They are preparing for adult sex roles later in life.
Boundary work by parents is important here. Gently but firmly, mothers need to allow their daughters to identify and to compete. They must also deal with the possessiveness of their sons, letting them know that “I know you’d like to marry Mom, but Mom’s married to Dad.” Fathers have to do the same job with their sons and daughters. This helps children learn to identify with the opposite-sex parent and take on appropriate characteristics.
Parents who fear the budding sexuality of their children will often become critical of these intense longings. Their own fear may cause them to attack or to shame their child, causing her to repress her sexuality. At the other extreme, the needy parent will sometimes emotionally, or even physically, seduce the child of the opposite sex. The mother who tells her son that “Daddy doesn’t understand me—you’re the only one who can” is ensuring years of confusion about sex roles for her son. Mature parents need to keep a boundary between allowing sex role typing to emerge—and keeping the lines between parent and child clear.
Six to Eleven Years
During what is called latency, or the years of industry, the child is preparing for the upcoming thrust into adolescence. These years are the last true years of childhood. They are important for learning task orientation through schoolwork and play, and for learning to connect with same-sex peers.
An extremely busy time for work and friends, this period carries its own boundary tasks for parents. Here, you need to help your kids establish the fundamentals of tasks: doing homework, house chores, and projects. They need to learn planning and the discipline of keeping at a job until it’s finished. They need to learn such boundary work as delay of gratification, goal orientation, and budgeting time.
Eleven to Eighteen Years
Adolescence, the final step before adulthood, involves important tasks such as sexual maturation, a sense of solidifying identity in any surrounding, career leanings, and love choices. It can be a frightening yet exciting time for both child and parents.
By this point, the “de-parenting” process should have begun. Things are beginning to shift between you and your youngster. Instead of controlling your child, you influence her. You increase her freedom, as well as responsibility. You renegotiate restrictions, limits, and consequences with more flexibility.
All of these changes are like the countdown of a NASA space shuttle. You are preparing for the launching of a young adult into the world. Wise parents keep the imminent catapulting of their teens into society in the back of their minds at all times. The question they must always struggle with is no longer, “How can I make them behave?” but rather, “How can I help them survive on their own?”
Teens need to be setting their own relational, scheduling, values, and money boundaries as much as possible. And they should suffer real-life consequences when they cross their boundaries. The seventeen-year-old who is still disciplined with TV and phone restrictions may have real problems at college in one year. Professors, deans, and residence hall assistants don’t impose these kinds of restrictions; they resort to tactics such as failing grades, suspension, and expulsion.
If you are the parent of a teen who hasn’t had boundary training, you may feel at a loss about what to do. You need to begin at whatever point your teens are. When their ability to say and hear no is deficient, clarifying house rules and consequences can often help in the last few years before the youth leaves home.
Symptoms such as the following, however, may indicate a more serious problem:
Many parents, observing these problems, react with either too many boundaries, or too few. The too-strict parent runs the risk of alienating the almost-adult from the home connection. The too-lenient parent wants to be the child’s best friend at a time the teen needs someone to respect. At this point, parents should consider consulting a therapist who understands teen issues. The stakes are simply too high to ignore professional help.
Many parents are confused by how to teach children to respect boundaries. They read countless books and articles on spanking, time-outs, restrictions, and allowances. While this question is beyond the scope of this book, a few thoughts may help organize the searching parent.
1. Consequences are intended to increase the child’s sense of responsibility and control over his life. Discipline that increases the child’s sense of helplessness isn’t helpful. Dragging a sixteen-year-old girl to class doesn’t build the internal motivation she’ll need in two years when she’s in college. A system of rewards and consequences that help her choose school for her own benefit has much better possibilities for success.
2. Consequences must be age-appropriate. You need to think through the meaning of your discipline. Spanking, for example, humiliates and angers a teenager; however, administered correctly, it can help build structure for a four-year-old.
3. Consequences must be related to the seriousness of the infraction. Just as the penal system has different prison stays for different crimes, you must be able to distinguish between minor and severe infractions. Otherwise, severe penalties become meaningless.
A client once told me, “I got whippings for little things and for big things. So I started getting more involved in big things. It just seemed more efficient.” Once you’ve been sentenced to death, you don’t have much to gain by being good!
4. The goal of boundaries is an internal sense of motivation, with self-induced consequences. Successful parenting means that our kids want to get out of bed and go to school, be responsible, be empathic, and be caring because that’s important to them, not because it’s important to us. It’s only when love and limits are a genuine part of the child’s character that true maturity can occur. Otherwise, we are raising compliant parrots who will, in time, self-destruct.
Parents have a sober responsibility: teaching their children to have an internal sense of boundaries and to respect the boundaries of others. It’s sober because the Bible says it’s sober: “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).
There are certainly no guarantees that our training will be heeded. Children have the responsibility to listen and learn. The older they are, the more responsibility they have. Yet as we learn about our own boundary issues, take responsibility for them, and grow up ourselves, we increase our kids’ chances to learn boundaries in an adult world in which these abilities will be sorely needed—every day of their lives.