The way we set limits has such profound implications for our parenting: it’s the difference between parenting in a constant state of anxiety, and being truly calm and confident that you’re making the right decisions as you move through your day.
If we set ineffective limits, our child never knows where we stand. They push and push and push because they know we will allow it, then finally we blow up because they pushed us TOO FAR and they end up in tears (or angry) and we end up angry (or in tears, or both).
But doesn’t setting limits mean being “harsh” or “punitive”? Not at all! When we set the right limits (by which I mean the right limits for your family), you can hold those limits effectively and the testing behavior will diminish dramatically.
The result? More harmony at home. Less uncertainty for you. More confidence for your child. Give it a try!
 
https://yourparentingmojo.com/limits/?utm_campaign=settinglimits&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=YourParentingMojo&utm_term=limits ()
 
Other episodes mentioned in this episode
https://yourparentingmojo.com/storytelling/ (Why storytelling is so important for our children)
https://yourparentingmojo.com/rewards/ (Should we just Go Ahead and Heap Rewards on our Child?)
Read Full Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to discuss a topic that virtually all parents find difficult at one point or another, and that’s setting and holding limits. What’s the purpose of setting limits? How do we know we’re setting one where we should be setting one? And how do we set them without getting into a big fight over something that ultimately turns out to not be that important? And can there really be cultural issues at play here? Why yes, of course! It’s parenting, after all… So we’ll look at all of these things today.
First, let’s examine our WEIRDNESS – or, how people in countries that aren’t Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic do things. The anthropological literature is replete with examples of how children’s behavior is controlled in other cultures, as well as historically in our own. Shame is one of the most common tactics used, as illustrated by this anecdote from a study of the Ngoni ethnic group in southern Africa that I think we mentioned in our episode on storytelling:
“A proverb might suddenly be dropped like a stone into a pond. The conversation rippled away into silence, and the boy or girl who had refused to share some peanuts or had been boasting began to wonder to himself: “Can that be for me? No? Yes? It is me. I am ashamed.” No one said anything but the shamed one took the first chance of slipping away to avoid further public notice. The use of proverbs [was] an effective at of making a child learn for himself and apply the lesson.”
Zinacantecan elders in Mexico critically discuss the child’s behavior while the child is present but otherwise don’t interact with the child; the child is expected to ‘overhear’ and modify their behavior. Shame is used in a variety of Asian cultures, from Bali to China to Japan to Taiwan. Parents in these cultures will tell others of the child’s misdeeds in front of the child, will ridicule, mock, and laugh at the child. Samoan children are reigned in with threats that animals will come and eat them, and the Kaoka elders on Guadalcanal warn that giants will take naughty boys and girls and carry them off to a cave, where the bodies are cooked and eaten.
Frightening Bible stories – as well as folk tales - have been used to control European children; in the 1800s children in England were taken to the gibbet to view rotting bodies hanging there while being told moral stories – and then they were whipped when they got home to make sure the lessons stuck.
And where stories, proverbs, and shame fail, corporal punishment picks up. The Mfantse in Ghana will even lightly cuff an infant for crying for no good reason, while