How to Set Limits for Children

Video Transcript

"Hi I am Pam on behalf of Expert Village. Now we are going to talk about understanding behaviors in children. Limits are a necessary part of any group or society. When you set the limits beforehand children already know what behaviors are accepted and what behaviors are not. There is two good reasons for setting limits. Number one it keeps children from hurting themselves or each other and number two it keeps them from destroying property. Now when limits and rules are applied children don?t have to constantly try to figure out what they can and can?t do they already know. Now, they probably are not going to like the limits and they are going to resist the behavior but they are going to learn to maintain and to set them, and a good thing to do is to get the kids involved, let them make up the rules sit down and say ok let?s make some class rules, what?s something that you think is a good rule? What?s something that we do every day? And the kids are going to go you know we always clean up when the bell rings. Ok, there is a rule, when the bell rings you clean up. Kids are more likely to follow them if they think that they have come up with them. And they will come up with things like we don?t hit our friends, we don?t bite, we don?t push, we play with things the right way. You let them know beforehand the right things to do and it is less likely that they are going to go ahead and do the wrong thing. Now, stretching the limits is a natural part of growing up young kids have not quit learned the skills to control themselves so they need these limits to help them with that."