Limits: "traumatize" or help them grow?

Last Friday, October 25, we started our school cycle for ISQ parents and we couldn't do it in a better way, than inviting M.A. Claudia Jiménez, who shared excellent information about limits at home.

As discussed in the conference, it is a basic theme that helps families manage discipline at home, in an effective, loving and with minimal emotional wear, because the issue of limits is preventive, so as Parents, having clarity, consistency and firmness in the rules prevents behavior problems inside and outside the home.

M.A. Claudia explained to us that the first thing to do is to think about what do we want for our children in the future? Most agree that the objective is to have functional and happy children that can develop harmoniously in a globalized world that can contribute productive things to society and resolve their conflicts in a peaceful way, it is then that the limits will help us so that in the long term the children can achieve these characteristics because among the benefits of establishing them at home are:

● Security

● Flexibility

● Adaptability

● Emotional health

● Autonomy

● Self-regulation

● Frustration tolerance

● Management capacity (pleasure and pain)

Far from "traumatize" or doing some kind of damage, the limits offer children better possibilities of development in a society that requires cooperative work, assertiveness, respect, honesty and more emotional intelligence tools.

If you already apply at home limits and consequences in an assertive, loving and firm manner, congratulations, surely your day to day in the sense of routines and behavior of your children, flows harmoniously most of the time. If you still have doubts on how to work them, here the suggestions provided by M.A. Claudia Jiménez in her lecture:

1. Ensure that at home, children have clarity of the family hierarchy: who or who are the adults in charge and that these are the decision makers thinking about the welfare of the family. Although they do not believe it, there are many families where the "blurring" of these roles generates multiple problems and it can even be that children are the ones who decide and "rule". Being very clear about the roles played by everyone at home will result in children respecting the authority of adults, including those of their teachers at school. Here the role of us, the greatest, is to set a good example, listen and guide, establish rules and consequences to accompany the children and show tolerance for frustration that is, regulating our own emotions. For its part, the role of the child is: take the example of the parents, seek to be heard and cooperate, abide by the rules and consequences, form a good dose of tolerance for frustration and learn to regulate their emotions.

2. Establish a solid and consistent structure: this refers to managing and planning very well our times and spaces in which the activities that as a family will decide will be carried out, having a fixed routine with clarity in the schedules (day, week, and month), the order of the tasks that the child has, Etc. This will help the child to shape and build their own world, it is the discipline that we are building so that our child acquires habits to be functional, M.A. Claudia, sums it up in what is "When ... can you".

Without a structure, the daily dynamics become a chaos, where everything is decided at the moment based on tastes, moods or other factors, which what will generate in children, will be a confusion, structure, demotivation and lack of habits, so then you have to follow them and "begging" to do what they have to do, of course at a very high emotional cost for all involved.

3. And the third guideline is to establish the rules of our home: these are the outer limits that will generate order and respect for all, it is also important to define the consequences that will be in case these limits are exceeded. The fact that children know them clearly will help to: avoid power struggles and develop self-regulation that is one of the main emotional intelligence skills we want for a healthy human being.

The tips for the house rules are:

• Dialogue, write or even draw them if the children are preschool and elementary school.

• If the child is missing a limit, ALLOW him to live and assume its consequences. It is very important that you do not fall into an overprotection that does not allow the child to learn, this would really mean leaving him unprotected for the future.

In the end, the limits will sometimes generate discomfort, disgust in children, but they will also form a great socio-emotional intelligence, giving them tolerance, personal strength, resilience, temperance among many other valuable lessons to be functional and valued citizens of society.

Here I close today's article but not before thanking the APF for making this conference possible.

I leave this phrase that illustrates very well the issue of limits: "Children know exactly what they want, but only adults know what they need."

Stay tuned for all conferences, workshops and other activities that we have scheduled for ISQ families.

Recommended bibliography that you can acquire with Adriana at reception:

"How to make the best of each child bloom" $ 200

“Positive Discipline” $ 270.

If you have more questions or suggestions write to me at isq.seguro@isq.edu.mx

PSY. Alejandra Morales Arroyo