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.

Positive limits an self-esteem.

It is very easy to honor a child when he/she sleeps or behaves properly but what can we do when he/she doesn’t do his/her homework or does not tidy his/her room or comes back home late. It is of great importance to realize  that while creating self-esteem the environment where the child transacts is as important as the emotional security that his environment provides.

The first step towards crating self-esteem is the emotional security of a child. Maslow places security at the base of the pyramid of our needs.

What do children do to create emotional security? They lie. While parents advise/ tell their children “I want you to think without being influenced by others, think for yourself and try to be able to say no” if someone (tells) them “to smoke. Children do not feel safe when they tell you “no” that is why they pretend, they handle the situations they isolated themselves  and compromise.

They think “It is better for you not to say no as you are safer when you accept things ”. That is why we can see children who smoke, who get involved with drugs or become sexually active when they are not ready yet.
They think “If I do what you ask me, you will love me more, if I smoke, you’ll be my friend and you will never leave me.” More over, if you are under the influence of drugs, you won’t get hurt , if you don’t care, you don’t get hurt and finally if you are indifferent, you won’t get hurt.

What else do children do? They get involved in gangs. The presence of gangs is an intense phenomenon in a lot of societies these days a

s they cover children’s need to belong somewhere, to have a personal identity , control, power, security, freedom, structure and consistency.

If we cover these needs of children at home an at schools then all these choices might not seem so attractive. We know that children need a framework/ so as to feel safe but that does not need to come from rules and punishment. In a number of schools they call punishment as consequences in order for educators- teachers not to feel so bad for what they do to the child. But that is very punitive. We often hear of teachers  saying “ If you do this, we will do that and if you do that twice or for the third or the twentieth time then something is wrong.”

What is the alternative version that we see in this set of rules? Classes without structure, full of anarchy in which teachers in the name of  “self-esteem” let the children do whatever they want without restrictions and rules. This again is not an environment in which a child would feel safe. He/she may have fun but it will not have the structure that a child needs. All these incidents may give the wrong impression about self-esteem and that makes a lot of people to think that self esteem means to let children do whatever they like.

In fact, children without restrictions have difficulty in “building” self-esteem. The correct alternative is having limits.

“Children with low self-esteem can easily be identified.”

Portraits of children with high and low self-esteem.

Children who feel satisfied with themselves, behave differently than those with low self-esteem. Children with high self-esteem can see themselves realistically and accept for themselves that “they are just fine”. Furthermore they can realize their potential and know their restrictions.

The evaluation of their skills is based on precise feedback rather than on a misrepresentation of what  they would like to believe for themselves.

Children that have high self-esteem in general have a great number of friends and it is quite easy for them to have a good relationship with other people and get on well with most of the students in their class. On the contrary, the ones with low esteem may only have one or two friends.

Children with high self esteem are often the natural – positive leaders on their class. They offer themselves voluntary, they are w

illing to help others and are willing to try new things. They do not feel threatened by changes or innovative situations, they respond positively to praise and recognition and they feel good with their achievements since they feel responsible for the results. When they face their mistakes or by having a wrong attitude they acknowledge in a realistic way what has happened and what their mistakes are.

Children with high self-esteem have targets/goals for their lives. They know what they want to do with their lives and what

they would like to achieve. They have heroes and role models which quite often guide their lives. When they face a problem, they usually find alternative ways  to solve it. They also have strong views and are not afraid to express them. This characteristic does not make them popular with some teachers. They are more interested in keeping their sense of self-respect or act honorably rather than trying more to succeed.
They get involved in defensive behavior , in order to prevent others from realizing how insufficient and insecure they feel.
These defense mechanisms might be one of the following:

1.    Revolution, defense, reaction, revenge
2.    They do not believe, they tease or they underestimate others
3.    They lie, deceive or copy others
4.    They decline full responsibility of their actions
5.    They intimidate (bully) or threaten other people
6.    They withdraw, they are shy or they constantly daydream
7.    They get involved in situations of escape like sluggishness, truancy, drugs or alcohol addiction

They tend to procrastinate, demand more attention, invent excuses and blame others when things do not go well.

They might react categorically (decisively) with boastfulness and bragging or they might act as “clowns”.

Those children may tend to withdraw or participate bashfully or rarely respond spontaneously or they need take part in anything.

They usually fall back on whatever they regard necessary so as to compensate for the feelings of deficiency that they experience.

Those students usually cannot benefit from taking advice. This is because they are more occupied with what the other people think about them than by what is explained to them.

They are afraid of failure and quite often they think it is better not to try at than take the risk and fail. So, as a result they rarely try as much as they should in order to succeed.

Even when they have proposals or when people indicate their errors they take a defensive stand which prevents them from benefiting from any advice given.

They are trapped in their own self-image which is dominated by failure and know that they are unable to fulfill the ambitions which others have set for them or even themselves. As a result, they feel undeserving, insufficient and unpopular.

In reality, those children desire more than anything else to have love, acceptance, positive feedback and respect by other people.

That is why persistent efforts should be made, so as to give them more support, multiple opportunities for success, positive feedback and in particular the sense that somebody really cares about them.