Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. So glad, really glad, that you could make the time to listen to these little wee podcasts. This week, I've been thinking a little bit more about boundaries, and a thought crystallized for me as I was talking to a parent, and that was around the issue or the whole dynamic of boundaries, and boundaries for our kids, you know, behavioral boundaries.
Now, we all know pretty much that boundaries are very important. You know, we know that having good, kind, firm discipline is necessary to raise respectful children and all that. But a thought came to me a little bit more consciously that boundaries are not just about the sort of the edge of keeping our family in, keeping our kids in within that boundary of acceptable behavior.
They're also about what we're keeping out, what we're protecting them from. So boundaries are not just keeping in, they're about what we're keeping out. Now, what I mean by that, and this is the thought that came in a very sort of crystallized way to me, is that our children, particularly the younger the child, the more intense this is, they have a lot of just very basic, almost primitive needs, really.
And one of those needs, which never really goes away, it just gets more integrated, is the need to be safe, the need to trust, that need to feel I'm secure here within my family. This is a place where as much as is reasonable, as possible, I can relax, I can decompress. And that primitive, just extending that idea about the primitive nature of this, is that when a boundary is secure, a scary animal, a predator, a predatory animal, to use that metaphor, can't get in to harm me.
When my boundary and the boundary my parents set for me, which sometimes I don't like, which sometimes I push against, but when that boundary is secure and clear, that means the scary stuff outside that boundary can't get in to harm me. And that very basic thought, I think is at the core, it's one of the main threads of why boundaries are necessary in order for our children's nervous systems to relax, to come down from red into amber and then into that deep turquoise blue relaxed state. When we have good boundaries, our children's nervous system can reset after a busy day.
They can dive down into deep creative play, focus on it completely, and just really be consumed by this deep digestive play and not feel they need to be hyper alert, up in their vigilance, looking around, making sure that nothing is going to break through. I can relax here. It's a very primitive thing.
It exists really deep down in our vagal pathways, in our nervous system, in the activity of the amygdala, sometimes called the reptilian brain. We don't want those aspects of our children's being to be activated at all times. We need them to be able to relax and reset their nervous systems and not be prone to what's sometimes called amygdala hijack, where that fight or flight, freeze or flock brain kind of takes over and dominates.
And so boundaries create that kind of security. And I sometimes wonder, and I've been wondering this week, if that's why kids push boundaries. Now this might be an interesting thought for you, because there's no doubt kids push boundaries, right? But I wonder if we could also see that as a child, kind of walking around the edges, the boundary of their known world, testing the fences, pushing, testing, pushing.
Is this safe? Is this safe or is this weak? And they push and they'll walk around a little bit more and they'll push in a different place and they'll rattle the fence, the boundary. But that boundary is one of our making, right? But they're pushing against it to see if it's strong, to see if that boundary is real. Are we as parents being real? Do we mean it? Are we consistent? And their need to push against it is actually a very primitive instinct of testing it to make sure that it's safe, that they're secure and that they can rest and relax inside that loving, firm boundary.
So it's not just about keeping the shape of our family, keeping kids within that shape. It's also about them knowing that nothing scary can get in. So that's just another way of looking at boundaries, of the beauty of boundaries for our kids and how necessary it is to have those boundaries to raise resilient, relaxed and can-do kids.
All right. I sure hope that's been helpful. Again, don't hesitate to reach out to me with my counseling, coaching practice right there on the website, simplicityparenting.com. Always love to hear from you.
It's just the best thing, being able to talk to parents directly. Okay. That's it for now.
Hope that was helpful. Bye-bye.
