Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Today I wanted to speak a little bit about boundaries. Boundaries for kids.
And there's a couple of different ways I wanted to reframe the conversation around boundaries. Firstly, is that when we apply boundaries to kids, and it's another way of talking about creative discipline, loving discipline, but there are boundaries in their life, it's fundamentally a way to secure them and have them feel safe. I talk about this in other podcasts and in the Soul of Discipline book.
But I wanted to dig underneath that a little bit today. Is that when we have a boundary in place, we first of all secure a child. Having a life without boundaries, or boundaries that can easily break, then what happens is the child's brainstem gets involved, and they don't know really who's in charge, even though, ironically enough, they're the ones pushing the boundaries.
But the more we can hold a boundary and our child come up against it, and it's almost like a fence, they push and they push and they push to see if it's strong enough, the more we help develop their will. This is my first point, is that a good boundary develops a good will, the power of the will. Because a child is going to push, they do meet resistance of, Sweetheart, no, we can't have chocolate just before dinner time.
No, it's bedtime now, it's actually gotten a little bit late, even later than usual, it's bedtime now. Or for an older child, we just can't do that extra travel team this semester, it's just too much. You've already got soccer, we can't add basketball onto that as well.
I know your friends are doing basketball this season, but you've got to choose. Now all that is, we're into the realm of boundaries. A lot of modern, very contemporary, very gentle parenting sometimes causes us as parents to worry about boundaries, and we want to co-decide with little children, we want to not have boundaries in place, we want to have a creative home, a flexible home.
And I think all that creativity and flexibility can be there. In fact, it's even heightened when children feel secure, because a child is then free to move into their limbic system in their brain, when their brainstem, the downstairs brain, feels safe. If we don't have boundaries, they don't feel safe, then they don't get into that creativity, because they're always wondering, am I safe, right? Also, a boundary, we often associate with keeping kids, giving them, defining our values as a family, and it contains kids.
And it does. But boundaries also keep scary stuff out. If you think of a boundary as a demarcation of where our space begins, or a fence, however we think of it, that, for a young child, even a teenager, means that my mom and my dad or my guardian, my grandparents, are keeping scary stuff out.
It's not just keeping us all in a safe place, it's keeping scary stuff away. And again, that frees a child to be creative and thoughtful and empathetic, because they're not always looking over their shoulder and being hypervigilant about, well, who's in charge and who's keeping me safe. I don't mean they actually think that, like in terms of saying that out loud, but that most certainly is what the amygdala is, the dragon brain is starting to yawn and wake up and open its eyes and start moving around if a child doesn't know who's in charge.
It develops their will, because when they push up against something, then they've got resistance. My favorite example of this is that anyone who's ever had a broken arm or a leg, a limb that has been put in a cast, it's obviously meant so that the hand or leg is protected, but doesn't meet resistance. It's not putting any pressure.
There's no pressure at all being exerted. And eventually the bone will knit, the cast comes off, but the muscles are all kind of flabby and wasted and flaccid, aren't they? The muscle, it's lost its tone. And so then very often we have to do exercises and physical therapy to build up the muscle.
Now, why am I using this metaphor? Because unless we give resistance to children, their will becomes floppy, flaccid, becomes weak. If we cave in to a child pushing, then they're going to come at us, and they're going to want the resistance. And it's almost like desperate will hunting.
They need to meet that kind of resistance, because that resistance will not only keep them safe, because there's a boundary, but it will strengthen their will when they meet the inevitable, no, we can't do that today. No, that's just not possible. I'm sorry, love, we're not going to be able to do that.
When they meet that resistance, that is what strengthens their will, because then they'll go off and they'll find something to do. But whatever it is, they need to meet, just like when we've got a broken arm, they need to meet that resistance. Now, the other thing about boundaries is that when we have good, clear boundaries in place, we're also helping a child understand what our values are as a family, because boundaries provide values.
Every time we apply a value and a boundary, we're clarifying what it is we stand for as our family. So boundaries are values clarification, not being mean, not suppressing a child, not at all. They're warm, they're kind, but they're firm.
Now, these kinds of boundaries happen in really small ways through each day and through the week. They don't come always as big arguments and great big, you know, no, you're not doing that, and I said no. There's those moments.
Hopefully we hold it together during them. But it comes often in the small things. There's this saying in the United States, don't sweat the small stuff.
But I don't actually think so. I think sweating the small stuff is what it's about, or at least being conscious of the small stuff. In the Soul of Discipline book, I give the example of when I was reading The Agony and the Ecstasy, the biography of Michelangelo.
I was preparing to teach a class on the Renaissance in history. I was reading that biography over the summer break, and it's a wonderful book. And I got to this part where people asked Michelangelo, how did you possibly carve that statue of David? And his answer was, I didn't.
I didn't carve it. What I did was I took away that which was not of David. And I thought that was really remarkable.
He had this vision of what he wanted that statue to be like, and then he took away the marble, the material, to reveal this image of what he was trying to create and did create in the most amazing way. And I immediately thought of teaching and of parenting, because whenever we put a boundary in place and we clarify that for a child, it's often a very small thing about food or an outing, or whatever it is. It's often really little stuff.
What we're doing is that we're taking away that which is not of our family. No, it's not of our family to have a big snack before we have dinner. No, it's not of our family to speak, to use those words.
We try to use helping words, not hurting words. And that, my dear, was a hurting word. And we need to put that right and figure out what was going on, because that's not what we do.
Right there is a boundary, right? But these are just the little, it's like chip, chip, chipping away to reveal this beautiful vision, as best we can do it, of what we want our family to be, not others, not other kids at school's families and what they're allowed to do. This is of our family. And boundaries do that.
They create an opportunity for us to clarify on a day-by-day basis what it is that we stand for. So when we apply boundaries warmly and calmly, but firmly, what we're doing is that we're strengthening a child's will, we're clarifying our values, and we are deeply signaling to a child that they are safe and secure. Okay, I hope that was helpful.
Bye-bye for now.
