Kids Need Limits: Be A Parent, Not A Friend

My oldest daughter is fourteen years old, and much to my surprise, our relationship is shifting toward friendship. If I close my eyes, I can imagine us grabbing coffee, laughing over snarky memes, and enjoying conversations about politics and religion. For today, however, my daughter is a teenager living in my home, and she needs me to be her mother much more than her friend. Though, in looking around, I get the impression that I’m not a part of the majority with this mindset. Am I the only one who believes kids need limits?

Children’s Rights

I don’t know when it first happened, but parents’ rights are in the crosshairs. All too often parents’ motivations and intentions are in question, and everyone else believes there is a better way to parent. In the current cultural climate, the word abuse is thrown around like it doesn’t carry any weight. A parent is abusive for trying the cry-it-out method, disciplining for disobedient behavior, having rules and standards, requiring church attendance, preventing transgender hormonal therapies… Responsible parenting is abuse, I guess.

Essentially, if the child doesn’t like what the parent is doing, then someone is inevitably crying abuse. And if parents aren’t careful about who influences their children, those accusations might just be coming from the child herself.

Do kids have rights? Yes. Of course they do, but so do parents. Also, parents have a seriously important responsibility of protecting their children. That protection isn’t just concerning physical safety, though. Moms, we need to protect our children’s emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.

Autonomy

The biggest underlying issue I see is the push for autonomy for children and teens. Simply defined, autonomy means the act or power of making one’s own choices or decisions. Shouldn’t everyone have a right to autonomy given that definition? The urge is to respond with a resounding yes.

But slow your roll, mama. Now, take a look at that minor you’re raising. Is she the epitome of good decisions and wisdom? Can you trust her to see the long-term consequences of her choices? Is she quick and accurate with her discernment when someone tries to influence her? I’ll take a guess and say “no” because your child is still learning and maturing. Her childhood and teen years will determine many of her future beliefs and actions, and she desperately needs your guidance. Your child needs a parent.

Kids Need Limits

I’ve been blessed with the God-given ability to say “no.” In fact, I kind of love saying it. I’m happy to say “yes” when I can, but I don’t feel pressured to do so. So, in my home, kids hear “no” a lot. My husband and I often stand between them and the things they want but don’t understand they aren’t ready for. We insist on limits, but our aim is not to keep them overly sheltered. Instead, we want to carefully choose the appropriate times for them to be introduced to topics, freedoms, choices, etc.

From my personal experience and observation, there are three potential broad influences in children’s lives that concern me. I think they require parental oversight and defined limits but are frequently overlooked. Yes, I’m advocating for taking some autonomy away from minors and, you know, ruining their unchecked “fun.”

Kids Need Limits: Media

You knew I was going to go there, right? I feel like I even need to put limits on myself regarding media. I’m to a point where I’ll turn off a Hallmark movie if it features LGBTQ+ messaging. Sadly, a lot of media content is not appropriate to consume.

Movies And Television

I grew up loving movies and television. I was always up to date on the celebrity gossip and had seen everything. Too much, actually. I had zero limits on what I watched. So, can you guess where I learned about sex, my body’s value, and how men should treat me? MTV. Janet Jackson music videos, The Real World, and Loveline were my teachers, and they did a crummy job.

Folks, nothing has improved. Rather, the shows and movies with sexual messaging are geared toward even younger children today. We have to be so careful and diligent in what we allow our children to passively ingest. Sometimes, this makes me the mom who won’t let her kids watch something they’ve been looking forward to or their peers have seen, but their response is almost always frustration at the creators of that content instead of me. They understand I have limits for a reason, and those consistent limits have helped me raise children who generally don’t care to watch trash that glorifies sin.

Music

I think I know what you’re thinking about my home. You assume we only listen to Christian music and avoid anything secular. Good guess, but you’re wrong. My husband and I love all kinds of music. (Though, I don’t want it all being played in my church.) Our children have heard music from many genres of music, but they have also not been allowed to listen to plenty. For instance, we don’t do curse words in our house. That eliminates a lot of songs. We also don’t encourage listening to hyper-sexualized music. Entire genres and radio stations are out because of that.

Each family will have its own standards, but as parents, let’s consider what the music is teaching our children and when to introduce certain music. Does my ten-year-old need to hear songs about self-injurious behavior, sexual assault, and domestic violence. Dare I say…no?

Books

I have struggled with books. Take some time to wander through the young adult section. It’s mostly trashy vampire romance novels or something similar.

If a book endeavors to leave behind monster love stories, then it likely leans into being a story in which alternative lifestyles are affirmed and celebrated. The lead character may not be LGBTQ+, but you can almost be certain half of her friends will be.

Then, of course, there are comics, anime, and manga. How pornographic do the images in these reading materials need to get before parents are willing to discourage them? Full transparency: I enjoy the Dragon Ball Z series, but I don’t think any of my kids are ready to watch it. There are some scenes I turn away from because they are too crass and make me uncomfortable. That makes me reconsider whether or not I would rewatch the series, so why allow my children to be exposed to it?

Whatever media standards you have as a parent, stand by them. Be willing to protect your children from some media influences, at least until you can guide them through discerning what is and is not appropriate, why that’s the case, and how media decisions impact our walk with the Lord.

Kids Need Limits: Culture

Cultural influences and media are often linked. So much of the culture is intertwined with media. Don’t think that’s a coincidence, though. Media is a useful tool to indoctrinate young people with whatever cultural messages those in charge want young people to buy into.

When I think culture for the sake of our current discussion, I’m thinking about social media influencers (which could also be under the media heading), trendy clothing, makeup and hair expectations, rejecting family and friends for political associations, and an overreliance on online connections as opposed to those in real life.

What does everything on that list have in common? They are all linked to young people’s online existence which is the connective tissue of the culture in which our kids and teens are growing. Some of the things I listed seem to be unquestionably appropriate to parents. Why else would so many young people have unmitigated access to phones, social media, and whatever products they “need” to fit in.

This generation of young people is searching for meaning and purpose, and the cultural trends and norms fill in where we are silent. Kids need limits on what societal influences they can cultivate in their lives. My daughter, for example, is not going to spend time on Tik Tok and Instagram listening to women who encourage teens to dress like they are in their twenties. Not only that, but I’m not going to allow her to own those clothes. “No” is a complete sentence in my home, and she will live and look like an honorable young lady while she’s with us.

A Digital Culture

The big cultural issue, in my opinion, is relying on online relationships for connection. Children need to learn how to meet and connect in person with real people. I can only imagine how much of a struggle it is to make friends in the real world when 90% of your interactions are online with people presenting a curated version of themselves.

I don’t know how to best navigate our ever-changing culture and its pull on my children. But I know that I will limit what needs to be, and I will not allow my children to normalize sin and adopt it as part of regular routine because our culture glorifies it online.

Kids Need Limits: World Events

I think everyone needs to know what’s going on in the news. Hiding from the realities of the world doesn’t improve anything. What’s coming is coming, friends. Why not be ready and able to have educated and (hopefully) wise insight on the major issues of the day?

Although our kids do need to be informed, they don’t need to know everything about the state of our nation and world. An example from history that I introduce slowly is 9/11. I tell my kids about the attack on the United States every September, but I waited a long time to show them videos of the towers. The idea that we can be unsafe in America is difficult to process when you’ve only known safety. There are ways to teach that truth without pushing them beyond their ability to understand and emotionally withstand that information.

Kids need limits about current news events, too. School shootings, sadly, have become an all too common occurrence in our country. My kids know about them, but do they really need to know every detail?

The attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 is yet another important event that I want my kids to know about while creating boundaries on the information and images they see. Sure, my oldest can watch that news coverage with me, but my sensitive eight and ten year olds would struggle seeing some of the horrors of that day. Even just hearing individuals’ stories would overwhelm them.

Most importantly, walk them through the difficult events unfolding around us. While in my forties, I have a difficult time viewing and reading news coverage of events such as the Uvalde school shooting, riots in our cities, and coverage of the fallout of President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. I know for certain my youngest children shouldn’t hear too much about these things. Folks, it’s all right to gatekeep some information your child is not ready to hear. You’re the parent, after all.

Final Thought

Despite what our modern-day culture preaches, your children don’t necessarily know what’s best for themselves. May I go a step further and suggest they probably don’t. Mom, this is where you step in. Eighteen years is not that long, but that’s all the time you can reasonably expect to be able to enforce limits and boundaries on your children.

How will you know what limits to set? You’re the parent, and no one knows your children better than you do. Be secure about that privileged position you have in their lives. Consider this: What kind of men and women are you hoping to raise. Instill the values you want them to carry with them through life now. They’ll be mad at you sometimes. Maybe they are going to think you’re too strict. In fact, I’d bet everything I own they will have a friend whose mom does the exact opposite of you. That’s what you’ll be told, at least.

The temptation is strong to let your children decide for themselves pretty much everything. If you think giving them everything they want will make them your lifelong friends, though, you’re sadly mistaken. And really, should that really be your goal? Be who you were meant to be. A parent. The boundaries and limits will change over time, but your kids need limits. Loving them best will sometimes make you look like the bad guy. So what? Don’t neglect guiding and influencing your children because you’re scared of being “mean.” Do the hard thing and love your children enough to be the one in charge.

What limits do you set for your children?

Image courtesy of Jon Flobrant via Unsplash.