Reasonable Boundaries

Proper boundaries and rules are appropriate for parents to implement to keep their children safe. These rules will become more fluid or nonessential as children grow into adults. When you have a toddler, for example, you’re quick to tell them not to touch a hot stovetop; but soon you move into teaching them basic life skills like cooking scrambled eggs that require them to use the hot stove on their own. This is why understanding the basics of human development can be helpful in knowing where to set boundaries and when to relax them. All parents want to keep their children safe and protect them from hardship at every age, but that doesn’t help create fully functioning, resilient adults. A proper understanding of development and boundaries also helps us become caregivers who can weather some of the bumpier parts of human development during the adolescent years. We might stop checking to see that our kids are meeting milestones after the first few years, but that doesn’t mean they stop growing. This CDC provides a helpful reference list of positive parenting tips based on normal human development: https://www.cdc.gov/child-development/positive-parenting-tips/index.html.