4 Reasons It's Important For Parents To Set Healthy Boundaries With Kids

Today, many households have "mini-democracies" where a children's voices or opinion is equal to those of their parents. In some families, the child's voice even takes over. And in other families, certain parents will even fully sacrifice his or her own needs to make their child happy.

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.

Secure boundaries set by the parent (not negotiated by the child) reduce anxiety. Rules and routines like meal times, bed times, homework time, chores, and screen time — that are set and monitored by the parent — create predictability in a child's life. Predictability reduces uncertainty, and that reduces anxiety.

In other words, a child's brain is not fully developed, and hence shouldn't be given decision-making power over adults. According to child developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, "magical thinking" predominates in children aged two to seven. This "magical thinking" is what makes children amazing and so full of wonder. But it also suggests that young children are not equipped to be in charge of big decisions — beyond choosing peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese.

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!).

For many families, a child's emotions, needs and desires can run the parent's whole day rather than the other way around. Narcissism is normal, and is developmentally appropriate in small children.

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.

In any developmental task from walking to talking to learning to read or drive a car, kids need to struggle. Struggle is how we mature and learn mastery of new things. If children are brought up with the expectation that they will always be "in charge," they want things to be easy. They also parents to remove struggle and fix their disappointments (sometimes called snowplow or helicopter parenting). A parent in charge knows it is not only OK for a child to struggle with a limit or a rule, it is actually good and healthy. It is OK if they have to turn off their video game to do their reading, or are asked to eat more vegetables or do an extra chore to help mom.