A Roadmap To Setting Limits With Love
As you know, I am on a mission to help parents experience less stress and more joy with their little ones. It has become very clear from my work in the trenches with families that being comfortable with setting clear limits and boundaries, and implementing them in a way that is loving, is key to achieving this goal. Otherwise, parents are in constant power-struggles with their kids and harboring very negative feelings about them. Nothing feels worse.
It doesn't have to be that way, even with the most intensely reactive kids.
Mastering this skill of setting limits calmly and lovingly often feels elusive and impossible to the moms and dads I work with, when they first come to see me. But this dream has become a reality for so many; they are now in charge in the loving way their children need them to be, and it is truly life-changing for everyone involved.
One of these parents recently asked if I had a cheat-sheet that lays out the key steps to being a loving, limit-setter. While I write extensively on this subject, I realized that I do not have a resource that distills this process down. There's a reason for this: I am not a fan of prescriptive approaches (5 steps to getting your child to sleep; 4 steps to stopping tantrums, and so forth) because they are often formulaic/one-size-fits-all plans that don't take into account all the individual differences in kids and families. And when the system doesn't work, it leaves parents feeling more despairing.
At the same time, I see the value in having an organized way of thinking about how to approach a challenging situation, especially when it is triggering and likely to lead to reactivity, which rarely results in a positive, effective outcome.
So, in the hopes that it helps you get a promising start to the new year, this edition of the newsletter offers a roadmap for how to respond in difficult moments in a way that is loving and supportive, AND that keeps you in charge by implementing the boundaries children need to learn to cope with life's limits.