11 Reasons to Use Boundaries with Your Children
by Jane Bluestein, Ph.D.
Boundaries allow you to express your limits and to communicate the conditions
or availability of certain privileges that your children desire.
Boundaries prevent conflict and build win-win power structures. They
help you take care of yourself while attempting to accommodate your
children’s needs or desires.
Boundaries build a reward-oriented home environment. They emphasize
positive consequences— desirable outcomes available with cooperation.
Boundaries create less stress and fewer power struggles than rules and
demands (which are typically win-lose and often focus on punishments
or negative outcomes for noncompliance).
Boundaries build mutual consideration and respect.
Boundaries do not rely on the child’s fear of your emotional reaction
(such as anger, disapproval or disappointment) to help you get what
you want.
Boundaries allow positive and negative consequences to occur in a nonpunitive
environment (negative consequences simply being the absence of positive
consequences). As long as parents only allow positive consequences to
occur when children have done their part, boundaries hold children accountable
for their own behavior.
Boundaries with good adult follow through can minimize children’s
behaviors such as whining, begging, temper tantrums, defiance, lying
or making excuses to get they want.
Boundaries leave the door open for your children to change their behavior
in order to get their needs met. While rules or threats emphasize the
penalties for misbehavior, boundaries focus on the ability to make more
constructive choices.
Boundaries do not threaten emotional safety in relationships, or in
the home environment.
Boundary-setting is especially effective in an atmosphere of love, acceptance,
respect and trust, although the process can help create these qualities
in relationship or environments in which they do not initially exist.
Excerpted and adapted from The Parent’s Little Book of Lists:
Do’s & Don’ts of Effective Parenting by Jane Bluestein, Ph.D.,
© 1997, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL.
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This page is also available in Spanish.
This page is also available in French.
See related handouts:
5 Characteristics of a Good Boundary
9 Things to Remember When Setting
a Boundary
6 Reasons to Not Ask your Children
for Excuses
Motivating cooperative behavior.
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