Healthy Boundaries are Valuable

Throughout 2019, we have provided info to help you and your children value, establish and maintain Healthy Boundaries. This month, we are excited to share some great ideas from Brene’ Brown, who has written several top-selling books and teaches in the School of Social Work at the University of Houston. She is married to a pediatrician and her experience with families shows how valuable boundaries are… even if children do a lot of complaining at first!

Here are a few of her tips:

It’s natural for children to complain and push against boundaries that parents establish (e.g., limits on screen time). It’s part of their normal and healthy development to express what they like and don’t like. BUT it’s also our job as parents to resist their complaints and hold the boundaries. We need to accept this tension and not cave in.
This is very important because children mainly learn how to set and respect healthy boundaries from watching their parents set and respect healthy boundaries. When children see a parent give in to their complaints, they learn that boundaries are not that important.
Boundaries give children something to hold on to that keeps them safe–just like the railing on a bridge. Our children depend on us to give them limits.
Brene’ asked college students about the boundaries their parents set for them and how strict they were in enforcing them. She learned that students who were raised with no boundaries were convinced their parents did not really care about them.

Let’s apply her tips to a specific challenge. Almost 1,500 teens and young adults were surveyed in the United Kingdom about how different social media platforms impact their mental and physical health. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram all received negative marks for quality of sleep, bullying, body image and the “fear of missing out.” Youth scores were associated with increases in depression and anxiety.

Other studies suggest that spending more than two hours a day on social networking sites is linked to psychological distress. After seeing friends’ activities and the number of “likes” others have, youth make constant comparisons, set up unrealistic expectations for themselves, and end up feeling inadequate and anxious.

If we want our children to have healthier results, what kind of boundaries will help?

Provide them with 30 min. of screen time to watch instructional and positive YouTube videos.
Set a digital curfew one to two hours before bedtime and explain why this is important. smart phone allowed in the sleeping space.Electronic devices send out an artificial blue light that can delay or suppress the release of the body’s sleep-inducing hormone, melatonin. This causes problems falling asleep and staying asleep. Sleep deprivation can lead to symptoms of depression, because our brain needs sleep to repair and restore its cells.