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Showing posts from July, 2014

The Boundaries that are Mine

 I want to talk about teaching and affirming our children's rights to boundaries in their own lives and in others. Kids thrive on boundaries (though it may not seem like it at times). Those kids that you see misbehaving to the extreme, up into their teenage years, are often the children who have not been given boundaries to meet in the first place. Boundaries provide stability; they are an indication of care. Saying that your teenager no longer has a curfew seems like a good way to make you a cool parent, but it's also a great way to subtly tell your teenager that you don't care about when they're home...which often translates into, I don't care. It's from this translation that we derive the instability of a lack of boundary. That being said, absolute authority shouldn't be confused with boundary setting, and this is a topic over which I believe there is significant conflict, particularly in community settings. Raising your child to believe that you