Love or Discipline? How to Balance Boundaries and Freedom in Parenting

Parenting in the modern world is not easy. On the one hand, you do not want to traumatize your child through harsh discipline. On the other, family life can become chaotic when a child starts taking advantage of their parents and the adults cater to their every desire.

Balanced parenting combines clear, consistent boundaries with age-appropriate freedom. Psychologist Anastasia Borisova helped us explore how parents can find a healthy balance between excessive discipline and permissiveness.

How Children May Show That a Parenting Style Is Affecting Them

As a rule, excessive permissiveness and overly strict discipline can have similar consequences because both may create psychological discomfort for a child. When something is wrong, you are likely to notice changes in the child’s physical health, emotions, behavior, or school life.

A child may often feel unwell and complain of unexplained headaches or stomachaches. They may lose their appetite or, in contrast, feel constantly hungry. They may also experience tics, urinary or fecal incontinence, or sleep problems such as insomnia, nightmares, and difficulty falling asleep.

You may notice a dramatic change in the child’s mood. They might become aggressive, irritable, or tearful. Unexplained fears, including fear of particular situations or objects, may also be warning signs.

The child may become distracted and disorganized. This can affect their academic performance: they may lose motivation to study or experience conflicts with teachers and classmates. A child whose parents are either too strict or too permissive often has a harder time adjusting to school, new subjects, and unfamiliar environments.

The child may feel inadequate or inferior and experience intense guilt, even after making minor mistakes. This can lead to defiant or attention-seeking behavior. The child may adopt an attitude of “I’m better than everyone else” or “I don’t care about your rules,” and they may bully children who are more vulnerable. In this way, they try to assert themselves at someone else’s expense and reduce the pressure of feeling “bad” or “wrong.”

Questions to Help You Reconsider Your Parenting Style

If you notice these changes in your child, it may be worth reconsidering your parenting style. Ask yourself the following questions honestly:

• Can your child freely tell friends and teachers what is happening at home?
• Are you, as a parent, prepared to have your behavior evaluated by an independent outsider?
• If you had been raised this way, what would you think of your parents?
• If this were your neighbor’s child, would you consider reporting the situation to social services?

Signs of Excessive Discipline and Permissive Parenting

Excessive discipline is a parenting approach in which criticism, control, punishment, or unrealistic demands leave too little room for a child’s needs, mistakes, and growing independence. Permissiveness is the opposite extreme: rules, boundaries, responsibilities, and consequences are unclear or absent.

Signs That Parenting Has Become Too Strict

You may recognize excessive discipline through the following signs:

1. Constant criticism: The child’s shortcomings are repeatedly emphasized, even when they make a minor mistake: “Oh, you’re so clumsy!”
2. Unattainable expectations: The child objectively cannot meet the standard set by their parents: “Another B? You’re expected to bring home nothing but A’s!”
3. Lack of support: The child feels alone and receives little understanding or encouragement, even when dealing with failure: “It’s your own fault!” “Stop whining. You need to work on your grades!”
4. Physical punishment as a parenting method: The child experiences fear and tries to make themselves as compliant as possible: “If you don’t wash the dishes, I’ll give you a beating!”
5. Emotional abuse: The parents manipulate the child’s feelings or use love as a form of blackmail: “If you continue hanging out with Jason, I’ll stop loving you.”
6. Comparisons with other children: Someone else’s child is always presented as better: “Amy’s daughter has won another competition, and you’re good for nothing!”
7. Imposing “correct” emotions, thoughts, and actions: “Boys don’t cry.” “Girls don’t behave like that.”
8. Total control: The parent monitors the child’s every step and leaves no room for autonomy: “I know what’s best for you.” “Don’t do this without me—you can’t do it anyway.”

Set Expectations Within the Child’s Abilities

To avoid excessive discipline, parents can follow the educational concept known as the zone of proximal development. This means expecting only what the child is currently able to repeat after an adult, do under adult supervision, or complete with adult help. What they can do with support today may become something they can do independently tomorrow.

Parents also need to accept that a child may make several mistakes while completing a task. That is part of the process. Sometimes, the parent simply needs to pause, breathe, and hold back their inner perfectionist and inner critic.

A parent’s role is to create the right conditions for the child to become psychologically and physically prepared for independent adult life. This includes sufficiently developed emotional intelligence: self-awareness, appropriate self-control, an understanding of social and cultural norms, and the ability to manage relationships. A child cannot develop these skills if the parent constantly thinks and acts on their behalf.

Signs That Parenting Has Become Too Permissive

Permissiveness can also leave a child unprepared for adult life. Without clear boundaries and responsibilities, the child may not learn how to manage frustration or accept responsibility for their actions.

Clear signs of permissive parenting include:

1. A lack of rules and overindulgence: The child is allowed to do almost anything they want, with no clear limits or consequences for inappropriate behavior: “You don’t want to eat your dinner? Sure, you can have dessert instead.”
2. Ignoring the child’s responsibilities: The parents overlook the fact that the child does not fulfill their responsibilities or refuses to take responsibility for their actions: “You didn’t do your homework? Okay, just let me do it so you don’t get a bad grade.”
3. Giving in to manipulation: The child realizes that their parents easily give in to demands and takes advantage of this to get what they want: “You won’t buy me a new phone? Fine, then I’ll leave home!”

In this situation, parents need to remember that their child will have to live independently one day. They will face rejection, disappointment, and the need to respect other people’s rights. If a child has always been overindulged, they may be unprepared for this “harsh reality.” This can contribute to alcohol abuse and other unhealthy coping mechanisms.

When Should Parents Be Firm, and When Should Children Have More Freedom?

What a child needs is not harshness, but confidence and consistency from their parents. Rules and expectations should be reasonable, understandable, and transparent. They should also be reviewed from time to time so that the child’s responsibilities and freedom can expand as they grow.

Be Firm About Health and Safety

Firm rules should primarily concern the child’s health, education, and safety:

• Physical development: Eating nutritious food, getting enough exercise, spending time outdoors, and attending regular checkups.
• Education: A parent is responsible for providing a child with a basic school education. Education is mandatory, but parents can decide which form works best, such as in-person learning, remote education, or homeschooling.
• Traffic safety: Not crossing the road against a red light, watching for cars, and following other traffic rules.
• General safety: Following safety rules online, on the street, at school, and at home. Examples include “Don’t talk to strangers” and “Don’t leave school without permission.”

Before setting a firm rule, a parent needs to be confident that it is appropriate and necessary. In a life-threatening situation, a child’s immediate safety takes priority over their independence. For example, if your child is about to run across the road against a red light, you can stop them abruptly.

Afterward, however, you should talk about what happened. Remind the child of the rule, ask how they feel, and explain how the situation made you feel. Immediate intervention can protect a child, while a calm follow-up conversation helps them understand the boundary.

Allow Freedom in Personal Choices

There should also be room for freedom in a child’s life:

• Hobbies: A child can choose activities that interest them.
• Personal space: The child can arrange their personal space according to their preferences and maintain it as they choose, provided that it does not interfere with anyone else’s space. For example, remind them that a bad smell coming from their bedroom affects other family members.
• Self-expression: The child can express their emotions and thoughts freely and in healthy ways, even when their views differ from what their parents expected. Do not criticize or dismiss their personal opinion. At the same time, remind them that respect works both ways: the child should not dismiss their parents’ thoughts and feelings either.

Three Foundations of Balanced Parenting

Reasonable freedom and parental trust can help children become self-sufficient and confident adults. To create these conditions, build your family relationships around clarity, open dialogue, and the right to hold a personal opinion.

• Clarity. The child understands and accepts the boundaries. Both the parents and the child understand the rights and responsibilities of every family member.
• Open dialogue. Each family member can safely express their feelings and thoughts without judgment. The child trusts their parents and is not afraid to share their emotions with them. They can also understand and accept their parents’ concerns about particular issues.
• Right to an opinion. The child can form and defend their own views. At the same time, they follow established rules and learn to accept responsibility for their choices.

Remember: children may not always listen to what we say, but they constantly learn from what we do. One of the most effective parenting approaches is to set a good example, have the emotional resources to support your child, and remain on their side.