This morning I heard a wonderful thing. One of the parents dropping their toddler off for the day happily told me the child had learned the word “No” and begun to say it.
To many parents this is not a word to embrace in their child, in fact, we all grow up believing that this word means disobedience and bad behaviour. I know that for me, I was often punished for saying “No,” and it took a great deal of inner work and unlearning this belief to break this cycle with my children.
As my children grew, they began to learn that saying “No” was allowed and was actually respected. While there is the perspective that this is a bad word and an act of defiance, there is another perspective: This is a perfectly normal word that is a sign of strong, healthy boundaries.
Children who are allowed to have boundaries and use words to communicate them grow to be confident, respectful adults who have a clear understanding of boundaries and how they or others can meet their needs.
Children who are not allowed to say “No” and have their boundaries respected grow to not understand how to meet their own needs or have them met by others. They may do things they don’t really want to do just to please others, because that is what they learned was acceptable within the family.
The thing is, we say “No” to children all the time while teaching them it’s a bad word. Can we see the confusion and conflict we are causing within them? We may tell them that we are the adults, we are the boss, and they need to do what we tell them rather than what they feel they need, and this is a recipe for unhealthy boundaries.
Unhealthy boundaries are a side effect of not having boundaries growing up, and can look like using aggression and force towards others to get what we want, or feeling like a “pushover” who cannot stand up for ourselves and ask for what we want, just like our parents demonstrated.
The reason we resist these healthy boundaries in children is because we are still resisting them in ourselves. One way to break through our own resistance is by connecting to our inner child and allowing them to stand up to our parents and say “No!” I once had a therapy session where I became my inner child and screamed “NO!” at my dad at the top of my lungs. It was a scream for all of the times I could not say “No” as a small child. This brought a lot of grief to the surface that needed to be felt. It was a very powerful session that has helped me in many ways.
If this beautiful milestone in children is honoured and left to flourish naturally, we will certainly be giving them a strong foundation for understanding themselves and what feels good or bad/right or wrong for them.
It is never too late to turn it all around and love ourselves for the boundaries we never had and begin to appreciate our true strength within. Once we do, we will grow to appreciate this strength in our children.
Leisa 
Leisa Coleman 