An individual's personal space is crucial to maintaining a sense of stability and comfort in their life. To protect our personal space, we set up boundaries that decide how much access we allow others to have to us and shape our interaction with people around us. While some boundaries are so obvious and conventional that they don't need to be overtly laid down, others are much more specific and require to be clearly established and put forward. As adults, we learn to recognise and respect the boundaries of others but as children, we lack the knowledge to discern and realize the importance of a person’s personal space. Therefore, it's important that we teach our children about personal space from an early age so that we can preclude the risk of our children causing unease to others by disrespecting their boundaries.

There are two types of personal space: physical personal space and conceptual or psychological personal space. The physical personal space is the area around an individual where they don't allow most people to enter. To teach children about personal physical space, the help of a hula hoop is frequently taken. With the hula hoop at their waist, a child can envision a circle around themselves inside which not everyone should be allowed. To teach our children about personal physical space, it is important that we make them learn the significance of maintaining an appropriate distance with people while speaking to them and not get too near others if it makes them uncomfortable. Children should only allow their family members and intimate friends to be physically close to them and that too, if they are comfortable with it.

Psychological personal space denotes the private thoughts, opinions, and intimate beliefs that people harbor. Many adults think that such things don't hold much value or importance to children but this assumption is wrong.  Every person has a place inside them that they keep for themselves and take refuge in. When a person's personal space is invaded, this space gets encroached upon. Acts like reading the child's private diary or eavesdropping on them are intrusive, unethical and offensive. They rob children of their privacy and make them believe that it's okay for them to do the same to others. Since children learn from observing and imitating adults, it's necessary that we respect our child's personal space if we expect them to respect ours and everyone else's. While teaching positive values like honesty, compassion, empathy and love, it's necessary that we advocate respect for personal space too and make our children realize the importance of establishing boundaries and safeguarding them.

In addition to this, we need to discourage our children from acts like not keeping their hands to themselves, standing too close to others while talking, bumping into peers, hugging friends who aren't comfortable with physical contact and not noticing if our actions are causing discomfort to others. In this way, we can bring up our children in an environment that encourages respecting boundaries and recognises the necessity of personal space. By respecting the personal space of our children, we can ensure that our children learn the same and grow into individuals who value the mental and physical well-being of everyone.