Boundaries are an important part of safe, healthy, and satisfying relationships. To be more accurate, without them, society would crumble. They ensure fairness and accountability, allow us to effectively navigate around and with others, help us to feel that we belong, and assist us in conducting ourselves in ways which are in keeping with our affiliations.
They range from the very firm boundaries imposed by the law, through to the day-to-day agreements between parents about the days on which treats are allowed, or not. To say that establishing an effective boundary is an art, is an understatement. They are required to be, at the same time firm, without being overly rigid, malleable without being flimsy, and negotiable while also being clear.
This post will explore the origin of boundaries in parenting and the power of "No!". It will specifically look at how their form and function evolve as children grow through different ages. It will explore the difficulties which arise both in the presence of overly stringent boundaries, and in contexts where boundaries are non-existent. I won’t go so far as to explore teenagers or adolescents in this post, because they represent a standalone topic.
Laws, Rules and Community
In civilization and its discontents, Sigmund Freud explored the necessity of becoming estranged from aspects of the self, to allow for the benefits that come from belonging to a community. In spirit, he sees little difference between human beings and animals, in the we are both subject to primitive urges. These urges, left to their own devices, undermine collaboration in favour of individual pleasure. We are all capable of murder, sadism, manipulative behaviour, sexual aberration, and a host of other antisocial activities. While these activities are potentially nimble ways of helping us achieve our individualistic needs, they are relatively short-sighted for two reasons. Firstly, we’re able to derive more overall benefit per capita through teamwork than through egocentric activity, and secondly there are some needs which we cannot satisfy without the presence of the other. Antisocial activities largely alienate us from others, limiting both the levels of collective happiness we can attain, as well as our capacity to satisfy our relational cravings.
This fact makes solidarity a desirable goal. To guard against our primitive, potentially damaging impulses, we establish collective laws, and norms, which make togetherness possible. There are formal and informal sanctions against selfish behaviour which raise its associated cost so as to make it wholly undesirable. Alternatively, antisocial community members are either permanently, or temporarily removed from the collective, until such time that they can be “rehabilitated” in ways which allow them to act in concert with the rest of society.
Childhood aand Good Parenting as an Induction in to Society
It would not, and is not, easy, to have constraints like this imposed suddenly. As a species, we have thus developed, rituals, processes, and routines, which, over time, aid the assimilation of new members, from birth to so called adulthood, in to the super collective. These processes are called parenting, and they aim to produce happy, healthy, members of society. By definition, this is an individual who can be in the world and meet their needs, without unjustly taking from others, or relatedly, alienating others.
The Art and Science of Boundary Setting
The process of establishing appropriate boundaries with children can be challenging. In part because it is dynamic, and changes over time. The boundaries one establishes with a newborn, will be qualitatively and practically different from those established with an older child, and certainly vastly different from those negotiated with an adolescent. Another area of complexity arises out of the need for these boundaries to mimic their broader form and function in society. They need to foster collaboration within the family, and ensure that there is room for negotiation in relation to them. Even our most stringent boundaries in the form of law, are largely negotiated through parliaments and through the court system.
For many, the day when you meet your hopefully happy, healthy little boy or girl in the delivery room, or from an adoption agency, can be life-altering in all sorts of ways. I'm not oblivious to the fact that some babies are born in difficult circumstances, or with special needs, but I plan to cover special circumstances in a different post. One area which quickly becomes apparent, is the fact that children of all ages, allowed to act unchecked, will unintentionally lose appendages, or bring an end to themselves. They also generally participate in the world under the assumption that they are at the center of it all. Effective boundaries address both of these concerns by primarily keeping children safe, and slowly helping them to realize that while they exist and have needs, so do their parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, and by-and-large, all members of human society, and by no-means unimportantly, our broader ecosystem.
One of the earliest challenges that parents face in their child-rearing careers is rooted in a feature of very early life, the absence of language. This raises a very important question; how does one establish boundaries if you can’t talk about them? Should we even be considering that boundaries are necessary for a little person, who has not yet learnt to roll over. There is a simple answer, yes. The question is not whether boundaries are necessary, rather it is about what types are necessary, and what form they ought to take.
While it should be fairly obvious at this point that boundaries at this stage are primarily required to be non-verbal, the verbal expression of them ought not to be discounted, for reasons which I’ll covered in other posts. What is acceptable and not, at this stage, is chiefly rooted in questions about what would keep a little person safe and healthy, in addition to what might distance them from danger. While we are unlikely to consider them as such, acts of care such as changing a dirty diaper, responding to a hungry distress call, or giving a bath, are some of the earliest experiences of voicing, negotiating, and/or establishing boundaries. Partly because they’re rooted instinctually in both baby, and mommy or daddy’s (or an alternative caregiver's) minds, in what is tolerable or not.
Parental Attunement to External and Contextual Cues
For baby, it’s the intrapsychic processes that bring disequilibrium to attention, and motivates bids for attention and address from mom and dad. For mom and dad or another caregiver, it’s hopefully motivated by loving feelings and the consequent urge to care for and monitor the little person. Baby highlights that they are at the end of their tether through tears and protest, and that they are contented and happy through cooing, and later babbling and smiling. Mom and dad notice the look or smell of a dirty diaper, or the amount of time which has passed between baby’s last meal and their current upset, or any alteration in the child’s appearance or demeanor, and act to re-establish any loss of physical or emotional stability.
These non-verbal acts of parental care, evolve in sophistication as one or both parents need to adapt to the prolific nature of early development. Babies regularly find new and interesting aspects of their worlds to explore, unknowingly placing themselves at the mercy of a potentially injurious staircase, or balcony, or, a possibly lethal piece of popcorn, grape, marshmallow, battery or button. A perpetual duet or triplet starts, where paternal and maternal figures institute boundaries such as the erection of physical barriers, or through the use of space by placing items out of sight and reach. Babies soon learn to conquer or outsmart all of the ongoing and novel efforts at maintaining their wellbeing.
This requires new thought and consideration about how to contain the baby, or the danger; consideration which no sooner implemented, will be outwitted again. There are countless videos on YouTube which bear testament to the ingenuity of tiny humans, in relentlessly pursuing their insatiable curiosity. They climb over the sides of cribs with the nimble-nature of a skilled burglar, or throw cushions from a relatively high bed to soften an otherwise painful landing, or scale kitchen cupboards to examine the scissor they’ve seen mom or dad use so many times before.
While early boundaries are largely based in caring behaviours, and later, on an avoidance of dangerous items and scenarios. Their social necessity quickly becomes apparent. Parents are, over time, required to balance their focus between care, and an avoidance of expiration or disease, with an encouragement of functional and appropriate means of participating in the world. Considering the latter need, this involves, among other things, helping tantrums turn in to requests, egocentrism transform in to healthy self-interest and empathy, impatience and demanding performances to be tempered with the ability to delay gratification, and indiscriminant social engagement to be replaced by thoughtful caution or openness. Many of these achievements in social savvy, would be difficult to negotiate in the absence of language. Conveniently, the increase in their necessity, is largely paralleled by the acquisition of vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and speech.
Responsible and thoughtful "NO" and "Yes"
One of the earliest words which most children learn is “NO!”. This is not by happenstance. “No!” is strongly indicative of the establishment of acceptable, and unacceptable conduct.
Children learn it early, because they quickly come to realize that it is a very powerful and necessary word. Unlike a “Yes!”, “No!” potentially produces a set of circumstances where the proprietor, influences the behaviour of the recipient, by limiting the range within which they can act. “Yes!” frees and empowers, while “No!” constricts and subjugates. In an ideal world, children hear a balance between “No” and “yes”. But they do hear “No”, at least half the time. Not always in verbal form, sometimes in symbolic operation through the erection of a gate to the stairs which they can’t open or climb, or dummy socket protectors/internal safety mechanisms which prevent little fingers from entering electrical sockets. “no!” is potentially protective, and facilitates the process of learning to inhibit socially unacceptable or potentially dangerous conduct.
“No!” though, is also inherently oppressive. It needs to be used skillfully and purposefully by parents. In excess quantity, or careless intensity, it can easily break a little spirit, or pave the road to civil rebellion and disobedience. “No!” and “Yes!” co-exist literally and symbolically in a symbiotic and homeostatic state, preventing both harmful indulgences, and crushing or hopeless defeat. For parents, this means being aware of a potentially ongoing spate of “No!!”, and an effort to find appropriate ways of saying “Yes!”.
With the little girl who today seems to be choosing all of the activities which would get her in trouble, the attuned parents asks “I wonder why this is happening today?”. To which they might realize that she’s potentially drawing attention to herself because she has been feeling somewhat invisible, or that she’s feeling fairly oppressed and searching for some semblance of liberation. To this they might respond by remaining firm that while she isn’t allowed spend an entire morning watching episodes of her favorite show on television, perhaps there can be an agreement on a finite number of episodes before she heads outside to play. To remain unshakingly steadfast here invites complications. Namely, that she may come to believe she can only meet her needs through illegitimate activities, wherein she finds a clandestine time to watch her show when her parent is absent and unable to intervene. Alternatively, she might come to believe that she exists in an unconcerned and uncaring world wherein she can expect to be dismissed in her bids without consideration.
It might be that while the little boy is allowed to be angry toward you, that you declare that anger can certainly be thought or spoken about between you, but at the same time, he’s not allowed to hit, scratch, bite, or insult. Perhaps the two of you can sit together lovingly, in anger, until he feels a bit better. If he can’t, you may give him some space to settle, promising to return when he’s ready to be with you. When he’s settled, the two-of-you can start to figure out what might unfold in you relationship and situation that would be both acceptable to you, and helpful for him.
Conclusion and summary
The spirit of healthy relationships, is found in the space between clear, safe, and predictable boundaries, and open, democratic, often difficult, negotiation. This isn’t to say that there aren’t other important aspects to relationships too, but i'll probably cover those in a seperate post. To sum up the current post, boundaries both literal and figurative, have a significant role to play in happy households, healthy children, and in a well functioning society or community.
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