Why Rules & Limits Foster Growth
A conversation with child development specialist Claire Lerner.
A few weeks ago, I posed a question in one of my weekly threads: Do kids seem more fragile now? In response, I received lots of comments and emails, including one from a child psychologist I have long admired, Claire Lerner. Claire is the author of Why Is My Child in Charge?, one of my absolute favorite parenting books for parents of kids under 7, and I have interviewed her here before.
I immediately set up a time to talk to Claire again, and when we spoke, she shared many thoughts on kids and fragility. But what stood out to me was her incisive perspective on why parental limits and rules are crucial for growth and resilience, and how parents can implement them. I thought I’d share her comments here today in a Q&A based on part of our conversation. (I want to note, though, that kids can struggle with rules and limits for many reasons, and that parenting approaches are never one-size-fits all. These approaches may not work for every child.)
Claire, you have characterized parental limits as opportunities for growth. Can you walk me through why?
Let’s say you have a child who says, “I'm not eating breakfast unless you get me pancakes.” What kids need is for parents to say something like, "Pancakes are amazing. We love pancakes. But it’s not an option. Today's choices are toast or granola.” And when they refuse to eat, you say, “I know, sweetie. You don't like the choices. But if you change your mind, let me know.” The child learns to adapt because at some point they realize okay, they're not making me pancakes, and that limit enables the child to be more flexible.
It’s the same thing with getting dressed. If you say, “Sweetie, you're four. You're such a capable person. I'm not being a good mommy by doing something for you that you can do for yourself. We're going to leave at eight. I'm going to put a timer on so you know what time we're leaving. If you choose not to get yourself dressed, no problem — we'll put some clothes in your backpack. You can go to school in what you're wearing and if you change your mind, you can change at school.” Within two days, the kids are getting themselves dressed. And, by the way, they feel amazing.
I'll tell you a great story about a four-and-a-half-year-old. The school tells the parents that he is completely potty independent, which is developmentally appropriate by four-and-a-half. He pulls down his pants, he goes to the bathroom, he flushes, he washes his hands, he pulls his pants back up. Really a superstar at school.
The parents have asked [me to help] because, at home, this four-and-a-half-year-old is insisting that his parents come into the bathroom with him every time he has to go. It's a 15-minute ordeal. He insists that he can't do it by himself, that they have to pull his pants up and they have to help them wash his hands. And the parents say, “We don't know what to do.” Their instincts were so spot on: They were like, “This just feels really uncomfortable. He clearly can do this. But how do we make him see that he can do it at home, too?”
So we analyze. “Okay, so what does your child want?” We can't go into his brain and do a PET scan and know exactly why he's doing what he's doing. But our hypotheses are that he has a self-narrative. Kids develop associations about their capabilities in relation to other people and their expectations of them. This is why often kids do so much better in school – because they walk in and the teacher's like, “You're a kindergartener, here, hang your coat up, come to the table, put your water bottle here” — they're like “this is what we expect,” and the kids totally rise to the occasion.
But at home, I think a couple things are happening. One is that the child makes an association of, in order to be cared for, I need to stay more like a baby. There's a cellular level fear that if they become independent, they're somehow going to lose their parents’ love and care.
So we're stuck with what to do. And by the way, they've tried bribery, they've tried rewards, they've tried using logic — “you can do this in school. Can't you do this at home?” But as long as they're trying to get him to change his mind, he's digging in his heels because he doesn't want to change the system. He wants them to keep doing this. But we have deemed that it's not what he needs.
So I said to the parents, “I would set a limit. Say: ‘Here's the deal. It's our job to help you do all the amazing things you're able to do as a four-and-half-year-old. Bathrooming is one of those things, so we're not going to help you anymore. It's your job. And it's totally fine If you don't like it. We don't expect you to. We know you want us in there with you. But that's our new rule. And what's so amazing is that the 15 minutes that we spend doing this with you each day we now have freed up, so now we're going to add 15 minutes every night where you can choose to have more book time or more cuddle time. Because now we have time, because you're doing your job.’”
So what happened next? This is where I envision the kid basically losing his mind.
He said, “I'm never going to the potty.” And I said to say something like, “That's up to you. It's your body, you'll have to figure that out.” And by the way, this is what builds confidence — “we're not telling you what to do.” I said to the parents: “Don’t do anything. Don’t ignore him, but don’t do anything. He’s trying to draw you in. We've already established it's unhealthy. What's loving is not going to feel loving, because it's going to feel withholding and rejecting.”
So, of course, by the end of the day, he's gone to the bathroom. But what's he doing? He's, like, banging the stool. And he's opening and closing the cabinets. He's basically telling them, “I don't like your rule.” But they keep ignoring it. And within two days, it was completely done. He was 100% potty independent, and he felt so good. They said he started to dress himself, too. And I see this all the time. They have such a good feeling that they are taking care of themselves. And that's when you see that it's a gift. The limit scaffolds growth. And there's very little growth without a limit, because we all just stay in our comfort zone.
That’s such a powerful story. It illustrates so clearly how a parental rule fueled this boy’s self-confidence and desire to be more independent.
Yes. But it was really hard for those parents. I wrote about what happened [with this boy] and a couple of people wrote and said, “What about [the idea that] kids do well when they can? What if your child really needs you?” And this is where the whole gentle parenting thing really messes with parents, because it’s not gentle and loving to be doing for a four-and-a-half-year-old what they can be doing for themselves. Our job is to help our kids feel really good about their ability to take care of themselves. I guess if your goal is to take care of your child and to be needed in that way — that's one way to go about it. But then you have to accept that your child is going to keep depending you to do things for them in a way that's much, much less mature than their capabilities.
Some parents might say, “Who cares? Why wouldn't you just go in the bathroom with your four-and-a-half-year-old and pull up his pants?” But, you see, the limit created the opportunity for this child to master a skill that we knew he had. And he felt unbelievable about it.
You alluded earlier to problems with you have with the gentle parenting movement. Can you talk a bit more about that, and how it relates to parental limit-setting and resilience?
A lot of what I hear is, “Well, we're supposed to bring our kids along and get them to agree to stay in bed at night, or get them to agree to go to the potty on their own or to get themselves dressed.” And that is, I think, not what was intended when Sarah Ockwell-Smith coined this phrase “gentle parenting.”
Gentle parenting just means that we're not being harsh and punitive. We're being loving, supportive, connected caregivers, who are also setting the limits and boundaries that help kids adapt and gain the skills they need to feel like the competent, strong, resilient people that are going to thrive in this world. It's just gotten really confused for families. They feel like setting those limits when their child is shrieking at them — that somehow that's harmful to them. And that's when they back off, and these dynamics persist. And it's not only not good for the kid, but the parents don't really love it, either. They're exhausted. They instinctively feel like this is not healthy for anybody.
What about when we want our kids to do something and we’re not sure if they have the skills to do it yet?
A lot of parents come to me because, for example, they know their child would love swimming but the child is resisting. And of course the child's resisting! It feels scary. But the answer isn't just to say, “Fine, you're not ready.” The answer is to say, “Swimming lessons are a have-do. Just like we decide what school you go to and what healthy foods to eat. So we are going to go.”
Once you ask your child [if they want to go], forget it — because their default is just going to be “no.” So you say, “We're going to go, and we're going to help you prepare.” Maybe you watch videos of people swimming or give them a few private lessons yourself. You're not ignoring your child's feelings. You're just saying, “I know this feels uncomfortable. But it's an activity that needs to happen.”
And when they do go, often the kids watch for the first two times, then they get in the water and they put their legs in. And by the fourth and fifth week, I have parents writing me saying, “You're not going to believe it. She loves swimming. Here's a video of her dunking her head.”
If you don't have your child go, there's no exposure. They're never going to feel comfortable. You have to create exposure in order for them to have the chance to work it through.
Setting the boundary enables the adaptation. It's just that the kids don't like boundaries. And once they start fighting them, parents instinctively feel like this is harmful, and then they back off. And then the child is making the decisions. But that's not the way it's supposed to be. Yeah, they can make lots of micro decisions, but not big decisions, like “Am I going to school or not.” And by the way, this is not about parents signing their kids up for lacrosse when the kid hates sports. That's not what this is. This is not imprinting your own beliefs, like your own desires, onto your child. This is, “My child would love swimming, but they're afraid of the process of going to the class. And here's how I'm going to help them do that.”
To me it seems like this is really about considering short term versus long term outcomes. Parents make all these concessions for their kids to make things easier in the short term — less yelling and crying, etc — but in the long term, it really holds kids back.
Yes, that's the thing. This is life changing in the most positive ways for my families. But it's hard work. It's hard. It's tolerating the protests and the meltdowns. It's really, at the end of the day, all about tolerating discomfort. If you want your child to be adaptable and resilient, and manage life's frustrations and disappointments, you have to learn how to manage not only your child's discomfort, but your own discomfort too.
