“You just need to set better boundaries.”
Few sentences are repeated more often in the context of working with children.
What is it that actually happens when boundaries seemingly “don’t work”? When children continue to show the same behaviors despite rules, consequences, and repeated corrections?
Many parents, teachers, and caregivers become increasingly frustrated. The child is often perceived as “boundaryless,” oppositional, or intentionally difficult.
But from a trauma-sensitive and nervous-system-informed perspective, another question becomes important:
What if the child’s behavior is not a matter of unwillingness, but an expression of overwhelm, stress physiology, or a lack of internal regulation?
Boundaries Never Work in Isolation
In my work with children and adolescents with FASD (and other diagnosis), I had to fundamentally rethink my own understanding of what it means to “set boundaries.”
New findings in FASD research increasingly show that many of the children struggle in areas that are central to following external boundaries: impulse control, sensory processing, executive functioning, transitions, emotional regulation, and stress processing.
This means that many behaviors are not acts of conscious defiance, but rather expressions of a nervous system that quickly moves into overwhelm, activation, or disorganization.
Transitions in particular, such as moments of change, interruption, or loss of control, can be oh so challenging for children with FASD.
And boundaries never function independently from the state of the nervous system.
They function within a relational system.
From the perspective of Neurosystemic Integration, we know that regulation first develops between people before it can develop within a person. Children do not internalize safety primarily through words or consequences, but through co-regulation, relationship, and a felt sense of safety.
When Systems Keep Repeating the Same Strategy
In my work as a social educator supporting a self-endangering and externally aggressive adolescent, I repeatedly noticed something:
The system surrounding her often responded with the same interventions, the same forms of boundary-setting, and the same control mechanisms. And all of this despite the fact that they repeatedly failed.
Often times, I even had the impression that certain interventions further activated the adolescent’s nervous system instead of creating safety.
This led me to ask: Why do systems so often repeat the same strategies even when they clearly do not lead to sustainable regulation?
Why is escalation so often met with even more control instead of first asking:
What is this behavior actually trying to communicate?
To me, trauma-sensitive work means: Understanding boundaries within the context of relationship, nervous system awareness, and differentiated perception.
Co-Regulation Instead of Power Struggles
Some time ago, I was caring for a six-year-old child with FASD. Transitions were particularly difficult for this child. After several hours together, we needed to leave the playground.
Again and again, the child wanted “just one more round.” I could already sense that the child’s nervous system was becoming more activated. At the same time, I knew that a hard stop would most likely escalate the situation further.
On our way home, the child discovered a pile of dusty sand and began playing with it. Shortly afterward, the sand landed on my pants, she had thrown it there, laughing.
People around us looked at us with irritation. From the outside, the situation may have appeared as a lack of consequences or missing boundaries. Internally, I was asking myself:
What does this child’s nervous system actually need right now? I didn’t see this as the right moment for a power struggle, shame, or rigid enforcement (it’s never the right moment for that)? Wasn’t the more important task to keep the transition emotionally manageable?
Only when the child announced that they wanted to throw sand into my face did I set a clear boundary:
“I don’t want that. That could hurt my eyes.”
The boundary was calm, clear, and free from additional shame. The child didn’t throw any sand into my face.
Shortly afterward, I drew the child’s attention to something that had previously brought them comfort and joy: the scent of a lavender bush that reminded them of a vacation in Italy. The child’s nervous system visibly settled. Later, the situation continued to shift through play…water, movement, imagination, - connection.
The escalation did in no way have to be won. It needed to be regulated.
Trauma-Sensitive Work Requires Self-Care
What is still deeply underestimated in many educational and care settings is this:
This kind of work is highly demanding on the nervous system.
People who accompany children in strong states of activation are often continuously co-regulating with their own nervous systems. Without sufficient self-care, supervision, rest, and structural support, this becomes enormously costly. Emotionally and physically.
Trauma-sensitive work therefore does not only mean perceiving children with sensitivity.
It also means taking one’s own limits, resources, and nervous system states seriously.
Because only a reasonably regulated nervous system can sustainably offer safety to another.
Perhaps the More Important Question:
How do we create conditions in which a child can develop inner safety, orientation, and self-regulation in the first place?
Because human beings, especially children, are not one-dimensional.
And that is precisely why meaningful support can never be one-dimensional either.
Dear care-system, please rethink, and remodel your care to true trauma-sensitive care.