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Positive Relationships: Behaviour - That’s the limit?

Boundaries, drawing the line, saying ‘no’ – it’s time to disentangle the terms, explains Caroline Vollans

We need to work with them on boundaries’, or ‘There don’t seem to be many boundaries at home’, are phrases used by lots of staff in the early years. The word ‘boundary’ has, over the years, become a commonplace term that is spoken about rather freely, especially when working with children and adolescents.

A boundary is, however, quite a complex idea with precise meanings and applications in various fields, including mathematics, psychology and sociology. Bearing this in mind, it is a thought-provoking development that the notion has come to be spoken of so readily, and casually. We might wonder what exactly we are getting at when we use this term in our work with children.

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