Julika Van Stackelberg (Setting Healthy Limits)
Parenting coach Julika explains the importance of setting effective limits to keep children safe and create a secure environment. She distinguishes between negotiable and non-negot...
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How Can We Communciate These Limits to Children?
What's important about setting these limits is making sure that your children know what the limits are. So asking tell me what are our limits? Talk about the rules. Don't just talk about it. When you are in a situation where you have to reinforce them, make sure your children know the limits ahead of time.
What Are Negotiable Limits?
They're not negotiable limits. Such limits could be as brushing your teeth or when at what time you brush your teeth. You could brush your teeth in the bathroom or you could brush your teeth in a different sink if that's okay with you. But that's a way that you can say, here's we need to brush our teeth. Where you brush your teeth is not so important. A negotiable limit could also be a limit that says what you can wear if it's whether appropriate. You could wear a shorts or you could a pair of shorts, or you could wear a skirt. You could wear a dress, or you can wear a T-shirt. So these are limits where the children have opportunities to make decisions within and that still provide them with the limits that you need to set them.
What Are Non-Negotiable Limits?
Non-negotiable limits should really focus around safety. For example, holding your hand in the parking lot, you definitely want your 2-year-old or your three-year-old child to know that there's no negotiation about holding your hand. They might be holding one hand or the other hand, or they may hold one adult's hand or another adult's hand, but the limit itself is non-negotiable. And these are really set around safety. Another limit could be which websites to visit. You can say, these are your websites. Here's the frame. This is where you can explore. And these are websites that are off limit because they're there to protect them.