In this article, I’m going to be talking to you about is how we use behaviour plans and boundary setting and to some extent, discipline to really change and improve the quality of interaction that we’re having with our young people. 

I’m going to be using a metaphor!

Here is my metaphor for you: I want you to imagine that we have a house and my question for you is for what reason do we have walls around our house? The answer is of course to provide protection. We also want it to protect us from a cold, the external stuff and the outside world. We also have the walls there in order to keep us safe so that we don’t lose our people and we don’t lose our stuff.

Some of you might also have a bit of a fence around your house as well. Why do we do that? We have the fences and gates there because we want to let our neighbours and other people know that this is our boundary. The boundary walls are to let other people know what they can and can’t do or where they can and can’t enter our land and when it would be trespassing. We’re letting others know about levels of appropriateness. We also do it so that it is a very windy day then all of our outside belongings won’t get blown away because we don’t want our stuff going all over the place. We also have them there because we want to be able to contain important things.

How is this relevant to setting boundaries with children and young people?

There is a reason why we put boundaries in place for children and young people. It is because it provides them with a sense of protection. When you know that someone cares about you enough to say “you know what that’s not OK, you can’t do that” it lets them know that you are protecting them that you care enough about what happens to them.

Studies have already shown that children who are disciplined do feel more loved because they are given a framework within which they are to interact and operate with the rest of the world and they know where the boundaries are about how it is they choose to behave. What’s really interesting about when we do that it also teaches them appropriateness, in particular, about how it is that they should be behaving and interacting with others. What kind of citizens we want them to become in the future and it also helps them to contain important things and the important things that I’m referring to here are their emotions.

If you do not put boundaries and frameworks in place for children to adhere to then what we see is obviously not their physical positions blowing all over the place and disappearing but their emotions. The child’s emotional state will be bellowing around all over the place and it won’t be contained because we won’t have put the appropriate structures in place for them to be able to contain it. Very often, when there are young people, I’m dealing with who have things like high levels of anxiety one of the go-to things I’m looking at these days is what is your structure like behaviourally and discipline wise. What’s going on in the classroom and at home because children who are anxious quite often do not feel secure enough in their life and sometimes that lack of security is linked to or there’s a correlation between that and the fact that maybe they’ve got a little bit too much freedom going on in their lives and so they feel like they’re kind of just drifting through without having direction and discipline to help keep them on the right track.

Sometimes there is for my conversations with parents, in particular, there is this feedback around, you know what he/she drives me so crazy, that I give up, I give in and give them what they want eventually. It might seem like from the child’s perspective that that’s a small winner at that moment because maybe they’d been nagging and complaining they finally got what they wanted, the thing that they’ve been hoping to get from either parent.  But actually, the longer-term ramifications of that giving in and giving up instead of putting those boundaries in place for them and saying ‘no’ and sticking to it despite the fuss that might be created actually, in the long run, ends up creating this effect of either high anxiety or their kind of behaviour and emotions of blowing around all over the place as if there were no walls, no windows, no boundaries, no fences or no gates none of that security around them.

My challenge to you for this month is to evaluate your structures, you know, have we got good firm structures in place around the things that we most want to keep safe? I hope that’s helpful for you let me know in the comments below what you think are the most beneficial structures to have in place within the home and within the classroom.

By Gemma Bailey

www.NLP4Kids.org/gemma-bailey

Something I would like to add to this article which I have seen with children in Worcestershire many times, and continuing with the metaphor, is that when a child does not have boundaries put in place for them by a trusted adult, they can often build their own walls to protect themselves. These walls can be more like a prison, very tall and difficult for anyone to break through. This is the child’s way of finding security, however what it also does is cut off relationships from other people and can make the child feel very isolated as they are reluctant to let anyone in. In this scenario, I would recommend an NLP therapy technique which we use to change a person’s unhelpful beliefs into helpful/resourceful ones using submodalities. Submodalities are the way in which we code our thoughts and feelings internally, and give meaning to our experiences. By changing these submodalities we can change our thought patterns which will change our actions and create positive results.

Our thoughts and feelings have a direct impact on the way we behave and therefore the results we get. It is vital that we have positive, empowering beliefs if we are to get the positive results we want. Any excuses we make for things we can’t do are just limiting beliefs, and whether you think you can or you can’t – you’ll be right!

If you would like help with setting boundaries using NLP Therapy in Worcestershire, call Jo on 07794020471 or email Joanne@NLP4Kids.org

The original version of this article was written by Gemma Bailey, director of www.NLP4Kids.org.

It was republished and rebuilt with additional content by Jo Doherty www.worcesterchildtherapy.nlp4kids.org