2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
First you need to decide what the boundaries are. For example, even in Ancient Greece, each farmer designated the border of his site, setting on it figurines of the deity of borders, which were very revered by all residents. They protected people from those who could encroach on their property and force them to aggression and conflict. The very idea of boundaries is an idea that protects us from unnecessary aggression. The emotion that evolutionarily serves the defense of borders is the emotion of aggression.
When it comes to setting boundaries for children, there are many substitutions. The first substitution: we mean what we think is right now - what we want or don’t want now. Moreover, we can consider the same action to be correct in some situations, but not in some situations. The second substitution: any violation in the adult world entails punishment. For a long time, upbringing was authoritarian: children knew that any violation of some rules and even just something provoked by an adult's dissatisfaction could result in punishment. Now parents cannot take harsh measures, at least in public. And we ourselves do not consider this acceptable, since we understand that such measures have a bad effect on children, their development and health.
However, society expects that the child will behave well (as in the times of authoritarian parenting), but at the same time the parents cannot do anything. In such a situation, the parent feels guilt, fear, helplessness and from a dominant caring individual turns into a guilty helpless creature who is afraid of the behavior of his child.
The child completely "demolishes" all the self-control skills he had, since for him such behavior of an adult is an alarm signal
And anxiety reduces the ability to control oneself and act rationally.
That is, speaking about the need to set boundaries for children, we sometimes mean some kind of fantastic construction: when a child would do what we want, but at the same time would feel it as his need or desire, he would observe all our prohibitions impeccably, unconditionally and at the same time did not get upset.
It is always worth remembering that you and your child are not equal. And also, it is impossible to be on opposite sides of the border with your child. It follows from this that you cannot fall into a state of confrontation with your own child, you and him will never have the boundaries that exist between adults. In addition, our main task is to protect and care for the child. And in a sense, we have a common border with him.
Here we come to a more robust understanding of boundaries - these are personal boundaries. The simplest explanation for personal boundaries is what I call mine. For example, my room, my belongings, my time, my qualities, and so on.
In order for a child to learn to respect the personal boundaries of others as he grows, he must be able to put himself in their place. This begins to happen around the age of six, when the control lobes mature in the child. At about the same time, field behavior (in childhood it is a set of impulsive responses to environmental stimuli) is replaced by volitional behavior and some kind of self-control appears. Therefore, when we establish rules or prohibitions, we must understand whether the child is able to comply with them or not.
If we require a child to respect the personal boundaries of others, we must be sure that we ourselves are respecting them. How does a child know that it is impossible to take other people's things if everyone, “and who is not lazy,” takes his things? How does a child know that it is forbidden to enter someone else's room if we ourselves violate this rule in relation to him?
If parents in the family do not respect personal boundaries, scandal, insult each other, can we expect the child to learn how to do this?
Therefore, first you need to reconsider the order in your family.
In addition, if you allow yourself to violate the personal boundaries of the child, having succeeded in physical or emotional pressure, then he will endure, and then he will begin to sabotage you according to the scenario "did not hear - did not understand - did not fulfill". And if at the same time in families it is forbidden to openly express their disagreement with the need to do something, and the reluctance to take any action is unacceptable, then the child will go into passive aggression. Therefore, talking with a child about personal boundaries, when you, adults, yourself have not yet established anything, is not worth it.
Returning again to the emotion that feeds the story about the border - aggression, I want to say that everything here can quickly develop into a confrontation, a war. For many adults, the problem of protecting their personal boundaries is inextricably linked to aggression. In such a situation, the child becomes frightened and stops doing something that you do not like. But will he learn to respect the boundaries in such a situation?
It is very important to remember that the idea of boundaries serves to minimize conflicts. If you set boundaries between a child and an adult, then you are not doing it from a position of equals. You and your child are not equal. Therefore, you set the rules. If you are a dominant caring adult who sets boundaries, then think about whether they are fair, you did not care about them early, whether the child is ready to comply with them. You - in the role of a wise ruler, must constantly "twist" these laws and monitor their observance.
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