The best ways to balance boundaries and freedom with your children is to listen to them and have a relationship with them. Children act out when either their limits are too lenient or too harsh, and the only way to know which is the case is to communicate with them. You have to listen to them and not listen to what we think children should be doing. There's such a wide range of what children are capable of at different ranges, and average doesn't always work for our children. So the only way to know what's best for them is to have a relationship with them and to listen to where they're at in their lives.