Boundaries

Recently I've found myself in the situation a few times where I have been round someone's house or out with friends and I have corrected something Chloe has been doing which I don't approve of and the person I've been with has said. "Oh don't worry, she's fine" or something similar. This has always been very well-meaning but it misses the point a bit that it goes against family rules or something I see as important. On the other hand I have also been in the situation where a person has told me Chloe is doing something which needs correcting which I am perfectly fine about!

Along with this I always find it interesting to be around other families and see what rules they have which are different from our own. The most telling time I have found is meal times. I have friends who allow their children to wander around with food, friends who make their children wait at the dinner table until everyone is finished, friends who insist on cutlery, friends who allow eating with fingers, friends who don't allow talking with mouthful, friends who will offer alternatives if something isn't eaten, friends who refuse pudding if dinner isn't eaten etc etc etc! When I say I find it interesting, that is honestly true and I try very hard not to judge or think my way is better. Every family has their own family history and upbringing which plays into creating these 'boundaries' and it is such an individual thing.

(Just as an aside I thought it would be interesting to put our view on table discipline. Here is a list of current 'rules':
- Eat what you are given, no alternatives. A 'reasonable' effort must be made but the plate doesn't need to be finished in order to get pudding.
- No banging on the table, throwing food or dropping it on the floor. Some playing is allowed e.g. - pretending spaghetti is worms hehe!
- Say 'thank you' at the end of the meal. Chloe is allowed to get down before everyone is finished as we believe she is too young to sit and wait. She will normally ask to do this politely.
-  Sit down when you are eating meals at the dinner table and no tv is allowed. I will encourage her to sit to eat snacks but I don't always enforce this unless it's something messy.
- Encouraged to use cutlery but if it's too difficult then fingers are allowed. Chloe is normally very good at using cutlery.
- We don't really expect her not to talk with mouthful or anything like that at this age. We figure there's plenty of time for more refined manners!)

That's more rules than I thought ha! I guess we try to take a middle of the line approach but I am sure that any parent reading this will have slightly different rules to us.

I find boundaries hard sometimes because I am not sure what is asking too much at Chloe's age and what she is ready for. I am so aware that life for toddlers can be really hard. They suddenly have all this new-found freedom and then they are told 'no' for almost everything they try to do. At the parenting course I was on they talked about picking your battles and avoiding having battles altogether. If you won't fight with your child then they can't battle against you. I think this is useful advice to an extent. Some battles are worth fighting but the other things are often so petty you can normally let them go.

A parenting book I own advises to choose rules which are based around protecting the child, other people and property from harm and try to let a lot of the other things go. I think this is helpful advice and it has come back to me frequently when I have been deciding how to respond in a situation. I would add that some rules and boundaries are more about 'manners' and these are still hugely important but maybe could be introduced over time rather than all at once.

I'm learning not to set the boundaries too closely or Chloe gets frustrated and we end up 'battling'. So I will let her get all the pegs out of the bag and spread them over the house (and later we will make a game out of collecting them!) and I will let her run around the house and shout and make noise (where else is she allowed to do this?!). I also think this is useful for children learning obedience, as if you have fewer rules I think they take you more seriously and are less likely to ignore you when it comes to the big things.

I don't want to always seem like I try and relate these posts back to God but I can see yet another parallel in this aspect of parenting in the way God parents us. God's boundaries are all for our own good or the good of others and sometimes we struggle to see that. We can think God is spoiling our fun or being too harsh with us, when really he is only trying to protect us or grow us to be more like him. How similar this is to the way our children must view all our rules! I will try and remember to look at situations from God's perspective and not my 'childish' perspective next time I think God is placing the boundaries too tightly around me.