The Dilemma Of Appropriate Boundaries

This is a portrait of my older son, Gabe, when he was 4 yrs. old. We created this together - a collaborative effort. Gabe, especially as a young’n, was very naturally full of his own bigness. And having a big heart to match made this outgoing enthusiasm, and happy engagement with life and people, a real pleasure more than anything. But no matter how beautiful his vibrant being is, this still needs to be appropriately contained at times… and then there’s that pesky personal space reality getting in the way when it comes to friends and “strangers“. So he and I decided to paint him in the context of these boundary issues.

In the painting, Gabe is striding away from the big red square of a boundary behind him… free with easy confidence. I asked Gabe what it’s like for him to be reined-in and contained, when he really doesn’t want to have to break his stride. He explained in two ways… one in words which said, that it’s like a dragon inside him wanting to cry out in fiery protest, and the other he drew at the bottom of the painting:

Looks like a pale, incapacitated, flat on his back, little person contained within the boundary to me.

I bring this up because it seems like such a key thing that adults and children have to contend with. And I tend to think it’s a major component of both a concerted effort to anchor pain into the human condition as well as potentially being an important bottom-line to how we can lift us up out of the insistence on this pain of broken will and strait-jacketing being a needed and integral part of childrearing.

There’s much to be said and explored concerning parenting efforts and the respectful embrace of appropriate boundaries. I’m hoping that people will chime right in with their thoughts here. But for now, I’ll offer these links to the great work some people

are doing to address this issue:

This is a link to a story NPR aired about an activist's efforts in Harlem - very important work here, and so worth a listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94977387

I was looking for a link to this new major study I heard about through BBC world news recently, which the English have done on understanding what’s behind children being so unhappy these days. It’s bound to be controversial, and did not bode well for parents, but I wasn’t able to find it! If anyone can post a link to that here, please do. I did run across this link though:

News - Health - Violent imagery 'harms children' . Last updated: 18 Feb 2005
The team of researchers reviewed six major studies on the effects of media violence on children.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4275131.stm