Why do children need limits? A few reasons:

• Limits make children feel like we care about them; they provide them with a sense of security.  Children who are raised without limits often feel abandoned.

• Children need you to set limits so that they can recognize and respect other people's limits.

• Limits help them to learn what is socially acceptable and what is not.
• Children need to learn that if they go past a certain point, there will be consequences.

Everyone has and needs limits. What do I mean by limits?  Limits mean to bind and to confine.  They tell children what you will or will not tolerate. Limits tell your family under what condition you are willing or unwilling to permit something.  Children need appropriate boundaries and limits for their behavior.  In addition, limits will help them to understand other people’s feelings and when they have violated them.

How do we know if our limits are challenged or violated? We will feel certain feelings.  Some of feelings may be: angry, resentful, overburdened, taken advantage of, abused, smothered, unappreciated and even torn between two people you love. 

If we challenge or violate other people’s limits, or the limits in a family, a group, a classroom or even a team, we may begin to feel certain uncomfortable feelings.  We need to pay attention to our feelings.  We have to have limits.  If we violate the limits of our group’s rules and the peace within the group (The family, the camp group, the classroom etc.), we may begin to feel the certain uncomfortable feelings.  We can use these same feelings to help us with our friends, and all the people in our lives.  We can understand how we affect them.

Ideas taken from the book by Kathryn Kvols, Redirecting Children’s Behavior.