Setting Boundaries With Your Kid Effectively and Sensitively

Do you find it tough to set time boundaries with your dyslexic kid? Today we're going to give you some tips to do so both effectively and sensitively.

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja and this is Dyslexia Journey where we discuss topics to help you support the dyslexic kid in your life. Alright, so today we're talking about setting time boundaries with your dyslexic child and doing so in a sensitive and compassionate way. And the reason that we want to talk about this is this often comes up around academic work, so homework, help, remediation work that you might be doing with your child.

Something that, as parents of dyslexic children, that we spend a lot of time on and definitely feel like we need to be spending a lot of time on because we know that dyslexic kids need the extra help. But I do want to mention that the tips that we're going to talk about here really can apply to any children, not just dyslexic kids. Yeah, and so particularly if it's something like homework too, the time of day is going to end up being a factor.

So I think it also comes up with time boundaries because it can tend to be something that could go late into the night, for example. So that's why this particular example is what we're bringing up. And as Nick said, because it's something that, you know, we feel like we need to help them with and, I mean, they know they need the help with, it has, you know, perhaps extra emotional layering than a lot of other things do, like, for example, spending some playtime with them.

Okay, so our first tip is to try to normalize it as much as possible by not having it only come up in the moment. Yeah, yeah, and so to make that a little more concrete, I mean, maybe you have just sort of a general rule that you only help with homework until a certain time in the evening because you get tired at that point or whatever works for your particular situation. And so if you've sort of established that as a general rule, then when there's a particularly stressful evening or you're feeling particularly tired in those situations, it's often harder to set the boundaries.

But if you already have it set up as a pattern, then it becomes a lot easier at that point. Right, and so maybe you even have a particular time when there's an exception because there's a really big project due or something like that. But it's still, you know, because you're still going to have to negotiate it in that moment, it still would be helpful to the child to know that you, you know, they would know also that it's an exception because it's like going beyond the bounds of the regular time.

And so that would already be in everyone's awareness then to start with. Right. And so that brings us to our second point, which is kind of following on this first point is how, what's a good framework for establishing those boundaries on a regular basis? And one framework that that that many families find particularly effective is to have family meetings. And there's lots of information out there about family meetings. And so we're not going to spend a lot of time explaining, explaining the details of how they work.

But I'll make a couple points about them. One is you can do them with pretty young children. You don't have to wait until they're they're older in order to do this. And two, I just want to emphasize that it's really useful to have a time set aside to talk about issues like boundaries and time management and scheduling. When you're when you're when you're sort of separated from the emotions of of the actual situation.

So if there's like if your child is is really stressed because they have a big project due the next day and you're also not feeling your greatest that day because you didn't get much sleep the night before and maybe something really stressful happened at work that day. Like that's not gonna be a great time for anyone to be talking about the boundaries and so having having the family meeting at a separate time when when you're not feeling the immediacy of that stress or those emotions can be very effective in establishing patterns that then can work for your family during those more stressful and emotional times.

Right. And even if you don't have family meetings or you end up, you know, for whatever reason, they don't work out in scheduling or you're not having them. I it still is important, I think, to take that separate time if you know, trying to do it ahead, a separate time to talk to your child about this. So even if it's not a family meeting, try to have that separate time when it's not in the heat of the moment.

And then our third tip is really just to be honest with your child about your own situation. That doesn't mean you have to tell them all the details of all your stress or anything like that. It's more about your feelings and just generally giving them the impression of what's going on. I mean, kids often pick up on this anyway, whether, you know, we want them to or not. And so so this this is this could be helpful even if you've come to a point, right, where you need where you didn't set it up right ahead of time, let's say, or you feel like, oh, wait, I could have set it up more than that or something like it's you still can try to set the boundary.

I think the important thing to be sensitive and to sort of navigate those emotional layers is to, you know, make it about yourself, like be honest. Like if it's because you're tired, make sure you're saying, you know, I'm really tired tonight or it could be because you had a big day or just because in general as to why. And so if you give them that context, I think that's helpful, particularly for the emotional layering part so that they won't take it on as much.

Right. They're not going to feel like, oh, I'm it's all because of my homework that we're, you know, having this difficult discussion or something like that. So it's like your part, your role, too, in the negotiation. Right. It becomes clearer to them. And and even though I'm saying this is good to do in the moment, too, it is a good thing also to normalize and model quite a bit. Yeah, to add to that really quickly, there's there's a concept of, quote, I messages, which means saying saying your needs and your feelings in the first person.

So I am feeling really tired today and I don't have I don't feel like I have the ability to focus and I need a few minutes to myself or something like that, which makes it clear that you're expressing your own feelings and needs and that it's not it's not your child's fault. Right. And that it can be really easy to slip into not doing it as an iMessage. Like you could easily say, let's say you always are tired today.

You could easily say, you know, I'm always tired at night or something. And that you can hear how that sounds more blamey, even though you mean it maybe in the same way. Even if you didn't have that tone, if you say you that way, it comes across more that way. So it's good, especially if you're already tired or in the moment to try to just take it doesn't take long. You just take a second to run through a phrase like that that you're going to say to your kid and make sure that you're putting in the iMessage way of saying it.

Yes, exactly. So please share with us any tips you have, too, about how to negotiate these kinds of things sensitively and effectively with your dyslexic kid. And we would appreciate it if you'd like, share, and subscribe. We're trying to get this content out there to as many people as possible. And if you're listening to the podcast, please leave us a rating and a review.