Richard Hogan: Want to avoid toddler tantrums or teenage drama? How to set boundaries

How should you deal with a toddler tantrum at the tills, or a teenager's transgressions... you create a healthy boundary and stick to it

'All the research on child development will point to the same thing, children need clear boundaries to understand that all behaviours have consequences'. File pictiure: iStock

“Good fences make good neighbours,” wrote the great American poet Robert Frost in his poem Mending Wall.

The poem explores the need humans have for walls and boundaries. Boundaries, Frost suggests, are what help us to interact with each other in a coherent and structured way.

For years, I have been telling parents that good boundaries make good teenagers. Boundaries are the starting point of raising children to be healthy, confident, and happy.

Every child craves boundaries. Boundaries teach them the dos and don’ts of the world. When a child has a clear idea of how to navigate the world, it makes the world less scary.

One of the reasons children have so much anxiety is because parents get caught in a familiar predicament; they want to be their child’s best friend and they don’t want too many rules and ramifications for negative behaviours.

When a child grows up in a boundaryless environment, it makes them anxious. Playing tennis without a net, you would not know the rules, how to win, or how to lose.

All the research on child development will point to the same thing: Children need clear boundaries to understand that all behaviours have consequences. 

Choose the behaviour, choose the consequence. That is a very important sentence for your child to understand.

So many parents are worried about their young adult heading off on a holiday after the Leaving Certificate exams. Boundaries are what help our children to make the right decisions when we are not around.

Those young adults will be more likely to make good decisions if they had good boundaries in place at an early age.

Boundaries are not punitive. They are educational. They are corrective.

The image I always have is how we teach our children to cross the road. We would never say: "Don’t worry about the cars, I will always be here to help you." That would be the worst thought to put in your child’s head. They would have zero aptitude for crossing the road and would not know what to do on their own.

We do the opposite. We role play crossing the road with them for years. We go down, we talk them through the process of pressing the button and waiting for the cars to stop, and then carefully cross the road. 

We teach them so that they will go through the same positive routine when they are on their own. 

Boundaries do the same thing. They teach our children how to navigate the world in a healthy and safe way. 

"If I do this now, that could happen."

For example, we have all probably had a child throw a tantrum at the cash register. The tantrum is designed for maximum impact. There is a crowd around; you are under pressure to get the food in bags and pay.

A tantrum is the last thing you need, so you might be more likely to give in to the demand. Now, a boundary has been broken and you have rewarded that by giving your child whatever they wanted.

Think about the lesson you have just taught your child. Will they be more or less likely to utilise that negative behaviour again when they want something?

The child should not have got what they wanted and should have been warned that they would not get it next week, either, because of the tantrum. They would have got the Peppa Pig magazine, or whatever it was that they wanted, the next week anyway, but because of how they behaved they won’t get it next week, either.

Consequences of broken boundaries

Sometimes, we can have a short-term win by acquiescing in the moment, but your child learns that they can get whatever they want, and that will result in long-term pain for them.

Parents often think that boundaries are a little dictatorial or oppressive. That is not their purpose. Healthy boundaries allow your child to make mistakes and get things wrong from time to time.

Adolescence is all about adventure and feeling your way through life. It’s about messing around and finding out.

When I’m working with parents, helping them to set boundaries in the house, I always ask them what the consequence will be when the boundary is broken. They have not considered that, and, of course, teenagers will push back against your boundaries.

What often happens is parents overreact to any breach and this collapses boundaries in the house. Because when we say: "That’s it, young girl, you’re never getting your phone again", we have overstated because we can’t implement that threat and now our language and boundaries have no meaning.

Understanding that children will push your boundaries, and having healthy responses for those moments, will ensure your boundaries will hold.

We all need boundaries in life. We need them in work, with our boss, with our children, and our friends and family.

Healthy boundaries create healthy friendship, and ultimately, happy children.