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Instilling vs. Repairing Boundaries
A wise mother of adult children once watched her younger
friend struggle with her youngster. The child was refusing to
behave, and the young mother was quickly losing her mind.
Affirming the mother’s decision to make the child sit on a chair
by himself, the older woman said, “Do it now, Dear. Discipline
the child now—and you just might survive adolescence.”
Developing boundaries in young children is that proverbial
ounce of prevention. If we teach responsibility, limit setting, and
delay of gratification early on, the smoother our children’s later
years of life will be. The later we start, the harder we and they
have to work.
If you’re a parent of older children, don’t lose heart. It just
means boundary development will be met with more resistance.
In their minds, they do not have a lot to gain by learning bound-
aries. You’ll need to spend more time working on it, getting
more support from friends—and praying harder! We’ll review
age-appropriate boundary tasks for the different stages of child-
hood later in this chapter.
Boundary Development in Children
The work of boundary development in children is the work
of learning responsibility. As we teach them the merits and lim-
its of responsibility, we teach them autonomy—we prepare
them to take on the tasks of adulthood.
The Scriptures have much to say about the role of boundary
setting in child rearing. Usually, we call it discipline. The
Hebrew and Greek words that scholars translate as “discipline”
mean “teaching.” This teaching has both a positive and a nega-
tive slant.
The positive facets of discipline are proactivity, prevention,
and instruction. Positive discipline is sitting someone down to
educate and train him in a task: fathers are to raise children “in
the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The nega-
tive facets of discipline are correction, chastisement, and conse-
Boundaries