Set Limits or Let it Ride?

Dr. Coleman,
My husband and I have an ongoing discussion about limit setting. He feels like I'm too loose with our kids and I feel like he's too strict. What's the balance?
Sincerely...

Dear Reader
How to discipline is a question that most parents are struggling with these days. How strict is "too strict?" Are children traumatized when we raise our voices or lose our tempers? What's the difference between being a sympathetic parent and letting our kids rule the roost?

Part of our parental confusion has to do with the cultural shifts that have occurred within the last thirty to forty years. These changes have made our households less adult centered and more child centered.

When I was growing up, maybe one or two of my not-so- inspired drawings would be affixed to our Frigidaire at any point in time. These days, whole houses (mine included) have become shrines to our children's productions.

Every time I go into the refrigerator, I risk knocking off photos and burying myself with their artistic productions of the past 3 years. When they were toddlers, our living room rivaled the showcase at Toys-R-Us. Unfortunately, I never bought their stock because I figured they had enough of my money.

We're a lot more focused on our kids than prior generations and most of those changes have been for the better. But not all.

Parents are worried, too worried, about the harm they will do if they set appropriate limits. They're also too worried about the effect of the occasional loss of patience. Parents of young children are even more vulnerable to losing their tempers because the stresses are much more intense.

In my household, the sheer volume of sound emitted by my sons constant vocalizations, whether it's fighting or playing, is enough to decrease my ability to respond as well as I'd sometimes like. I certainly am more impatient with my twins than I was with my daughter. Part of it has to do with temperament; she was generally compliant and easy to manage. The sound of the word "no" appeared to find some receptor sites in her young and developing brain.

In our attempt to be sensitive, many of us have lost control over our own homes

In our attempt to be sensitive, many of us have lost control over our own homes. Many parents are worried that being a figure of authority in the home is tantamount to the dreaded "authority figure" of other eras - an ogre who is concerned only with obedience at the expense of doing damage to the child.

I often see couples who still have their 3 year old sleeping in the beds with them despite the fact that this prevents them from having a meaningful sex life, it disrupts the couple's sleep, and gets in the way of their having quiet time together as adults at the end of the day. When I ask why they are letting their child dominate their life they say, "He doesn't want to sleep in his own room. He cries when we move him."

I am sympathetic. However, when we let our children dictate such critical arenas as sleep and sex, we are doing a disservice to those children.

We are telling them that they are more important than we are and this can be a problem when they become teenagers and adults. It can create people who are self-centered and insensitive to other's needs. It creates people who believe that what they want should always come first.

As parents, we sometimes let our kids have too much rein when we are feeling guilty about not spending sufficient time with them or when we have irrational ideas about the harm of limiting or redirecting a child's behavior.

Telling children they are nore important than we are, can create problems when they become adults

Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D. writes about the guilt that today's parents feel concerning the lack of time they spend with their children. She notes in her book, Spoiling Childhood, that as a result of this, "parents try to make sure that every waking moment of the child's life in the parent's presence is filled with stimulation, fulfillment, and access to a parent's undivided attention."

In two parent homes, "Four hands rather than two feed baby. Two players, rather than one, offer themselves as game mates in a Candyland game." Parents thus are always "on" and burning out a little more with each passing day.

But setting limits is ultimately good for everybody. We have all been to homes where the parents let the child or children constantly interrupt the conversation or make so much noise that meaningful adult conversation is impossible.

My boys seem the most interested in my undivided attention as soon as I have friends over. I guess they don't want to share me. Fair enough. But, it's important that they learn that I have needs too, and one of those is to have a period of uninterrupted conversation with my friends.

It doesn't mean that children should be seen and not heard. But they need to learn, through our hopefully patient, loving, and firm style, that we have the right to a life that doesn't always intersect with theirs. It's their job to try to get as much from us as we can possibly give. It's our job to know what is enough.

© Copyright 2007 Joshua Coleman

Dr. Joshua Coleman is an internationally known expert in parenting, couples, families, and relationships. He has appeared on ABC 20/20, Good Morning America, The Today Show (Australia), the BBC, and numerous news programs. His advice has been featured in numerous publications around the world. He is the author of the forthcoming When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along (HarperCollins, July 2007) as well as The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework (St Martin’s Press); Imperfect Harmony: How to Stay Married for the Sake of Your Children and Still Be Happy (St Martin’s Press); and The Marriage Makeover: Finding Happiness in Imperfect Harmony (St Martin’s Press). Dr. Coleman's service include individual and couple’s therapy, teleseminars and workshops, and infertility counseling with third party reproductive evaluations. Visit his website for more information or join the discussion on his blog.

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