Yes, it is important to say ‘no’ to your child

Not allowing your son or daughter to do as they please helps set boundaries and teaches them to take more responsibility

Saying ‘no’ helps children know there is a bigger system beyond them. File picture

YOU should have said ‘no’ when your toddler grabbed the packet of jellies at the till. You didn’t because you knew there would a full-scale meltdown and you were just not up to having a public tussle with your two-year-old at the supermarket.

Saying ‘no’ to their child is not always comfortable for parents, says Chris Place, accredited counsellor and psychotherapist with the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and host of the TherapyTalks podcast.

“Sometimes, parents want to avoid the outburst; outbursts can be tricky.”

Place says parental guilt can be a factor, too. “When a child’s in crèche, for example, and parents are working and busy, they may not see their child a lot during the day. So even in saying ‘no’, and setting a limit, they can feel guilty.”

Psychotherapist Bethan O’Riordan says the parents may have had difficult childhood experiences of being told ‘no’ — they were ‘bad’ for having made a mistake — and so they don’t want to say ‘no’ to their child.

O’Riordan says: “Parents can think, ‘We’re beyond saying ‘no’. Parents are always trying to do better than what they received [growing up] and, if they were scared by ‘no’, they may see it as really punitive and harsh.”

But, says O’Riordan, saying ‘no’ doesn’t mean we are the tyrannical, strict-disciplinarian Miss Trunchbull character from Roald Dahl. “We can say ‘no’ in a way that doesn’t create a voice of ‘I’m bad’ inside our child.”

‘No’ said properly teaches children how to be safe. “Life is about living within parameters of rules, so we need to learn from a young age what’s acceptable. And there’s great peace of mind for a child, knowing they’ve done something right — not better than somebody else, but right.”

Without this certitude, children can quickly create an inner doubt, an unsure voice.

We want to raise our children to have a strong inside sense of feeling good about decisions they’ve made. And we can help them do that by saying ‘no’, but without breaking their spirit.

Saying ‘no’ helps children know there is a bigger system beyond them. “The teen brain is wired to be focused on themselves. So is the toddler brain. ‘No’ really helps children see there’s a whole world outside themselves,” says O’Riordan.

Hearing ‘no’ also helps children look after themselves. “Some parents are very fluid around bedtimes; for example, letting children pick when to go to bed.

“But lots of children will stay up to the bitter end. They don’t see what we can, around looking after themselves — to them it’s not a priority.

“Hearing ‘no’ is important for teaching them self-care, where they can [eventually] think, ‘I’d better go to bed now, because I’m really tired and I’ve a match tomorrow’.”

Delayed gratification

Place, who has a three-and-a-half-year-old son, says it is vital to say ‘no’ to promote safety and structure, whether it is ‘no, you can’t go beyond this point — because there are cars and it’s dangerous' — or ‘no, you can’t kick me when I’m carrying you on my shoulder’.

“It’s important to hold a boundary and to set clear limits,” he says, whether about safety or values.

He points to the Stanford marshmallow experiment, a study done in the 1970s, whereby children were told they could have one marshmallow now, or two if they waited. The children able to delay gratification were more likely to have patience and resilience.

Place says: “When you say to a child ‘no', you can’t have a sweet now, but you can have one after dinner’, and you follow through, the child learns to trust you. 

"With delayed gratification, children learn patience, resilience, emotional regulation, setting boundaries for themselves. They learn to respect others."

So, what are the hallmarks of ‘no’ delivered well? Place says our ‘no’ has to be calm, clear, and confident. “We have to be firm and mean our ‘no’: It’s not up for discussion. It can be good to give your child context, but best not to go into elaborate explanation.”

A vital requirement is that ‘no’ is done with kindness — and emotional attunement to the child. “It’s OK for children to have an emotional outburst when they’re told ‘no’. Parents have to work with that and stay with the child’s upset: ‘I know you’re upset, I really hear that, I get it, but it’s still a ‘no’.”

Chris Place: 'Sometimes, parents want to avoid the outburst; outbursts can be tricky.'

He says ‘stopping’ a child’s feelings, or avoiding them, is like saying there’s something wrong with their feelings. “Say ‘no’ firmly, but with understanding: ‘I know you feel angry with me right now’.”

To do ‘no’ well, parents need to be able to bear their child’s frustration, anger, and annoyance, be able to accept it and still say ‘no’.

“In that moment, when you’re setting a limit your child mightn’t like you. That’s OK, it’s in the moment,” says Place, adding that ‘no’ does not work if it is reactive or said by an end-of-their-tether parent.

“I remember, as a child, that a limit put on in anger didn’t have the same stability.”

Teen tantrums

There is no parental guide on when you should or should not say ‘no’. O’Riordan says parents do not really have to know if ‘no’ is the “100% right thing” to do in a given moment. 

“It’s important for parents to feel into what they think might be a ‘no’, and to stick to it. If it goes wrong, that’s a learning.”

She says it can be easier for parents to hold their ground with toddlers and younger children than with teens.

“It can be very intense with teens. If a teenager asks, ‘Can I stay out until 2am?’ and you say ‘no’, and they ask ‘Why not?’ it’s OK for the parent not to have the answer and say, ‘Leave that with me and I’ll come back to you’.”

O’Riordan cautions against “smothering” children with ‘nos’. “Parents can be saying ‘no’ too much and yet it’s a very delicate balance, helping children feel safe and giving them freedom.”

‘No’ can teach children to have a voice and to negotiate. “Parents don’t always get it right. So, sometimes a child can hear a ‘no’ and think, ‘Hang on, that’s not right’ and go back and challenge it. It’s about digesting the ‘no’ first of all and then seeing if anything needs to be done about it.”

Place says that if parents avoid saying ‘no’, children may not be able to tolerate frustration when things don’t go their way.

They might be more impulsive, or feel entitled, or struggle with what’s a just boundary.

“And parents can feel they’re losing control. They can be burnt out, constantly trying to avoid confrontation, and [unsuccessfully] trying to get children to [follow instructions]. Things can become chaotic and overwhelming.”

Ultimately, Place says, not saying ‘no’ creates instability rather than connection in our relationship with our child.

O’Riordan agrees that if parents use ‘no’ properly, it makes the parent-child relationship stronger. “Because you’re setting the limits of what’s OK and that creates safeness in a relationship.”