While listening to parents you can realize that they feel; worried, disappointed , angry, anxious, sad or even frightened. Children, who up until now were co-operative, suddenly are revolting and becoming rude (abrupt). Accessible up to now children, they look distant. In some certain cases, we hear them talking about children who once used to be easy to keep under control and now (they have the upper hand)they do not know how to handle their relationship.
What is going on then? These parents love their children and they want a healthy (stable) and functional relationship with tem. Why do so many parents fear this moment in their children’s lives? In addition, why do so many relationships among children and their parents become unsettling at this stage of the game?
All the above examples are susceptible of having a variety of ways in which the imposition of limits can go into this relationship
A limit is considered whatever is set and is important for every proper relationship. The limits represent the terms under which we participate or keep taking part in every activity “I will take you out to play as soon as you tidy your room.”. A limit can even represent the terms under which it is allowed, to the point that it is allowed to take place or even continue doing an activity “You can have the car again next weekend, provided that you return it by the time agreed”.
Whether we call them circumstances or rules, limits are what we use so as to protect ourselves in our relationships with the others and the way that we try to maintain order and logic in our lives.
When limits are not existent, we can do some crazy things to others or even allow to others to do some crazy things to our disadvantage.
In plenty of the examples of conflicts that parents shared with me, we managed to pin point the cause of the dispute, to the lack of limits somewhere.
Parents may have failed in those situations to set limits, may have not managed to maintain or impose the limits that they had previously agreed on or even violated the limits of a child. When we refer to the need of having limits, parents, educators and counselors it is not sure yet what we exactly mean.
Due to the fact that limits obviously have to do with protecting ourselves and because taking care of ourselves is a a sense unknown to our culture, that basic technique tends to decline because of the way we grew up and were brought up.
