The other day I was sorting out my photos which are an ever expanding mass of files on my computer and I stumbled across a photo of our ‘family rules’ from when we had only toddlers.
We had 3 rules written on a small magnetic whiteboard on the fridge … I’d forgotten about this stage of our parenting. When the kids’ behaviour was a bit off we could walk to the fridge and have a discussion with them (at a low level) about which family rule they weren’t doing very well and how they could have done it differently.
Funnily enough I might not have called them rules if I was doing it again now but that is what we did then. Our ‘rules’ were very broad and designed to encompass most situations or behaviours that we could think of. We only had 3 because more than that would be too hard to remember and we wanted the kids to learn general patterns of behaviour that they could apply anywhere rather than a thousand micro things.
Our Rules
1. Obey Mum and Dad – well that was a trick haha … it covered any direct instructions. We came down hard then on direct disobedience because its often important things or even safety issues. Now that our kids are pre-teen we still treat that kind of direct disobedience as a big deal because it becomes a trust issue … the caveat though is that we rarely tell them what to do anyway preferring to discuss situations and come to an agreed decision with them. There are still some cases where we just plain call the shots and we expect that to be followed so that we can trust them and give them more freedom in other situations.
I am very relaxed about accidental brain snaps and bad behaviour but deliberate disobedience we showed little tolerance for and they brought real consequences.
2. Be Gentle with People and Things – this covered physical violence (of a 2 year old), snatching, hitting, biting etc as well as throwing or hitting toys and walls etc Once again its very broad but the children could easily identify it when we debriefed and it worked well.
In a way this is about respect for people and gratefulness for the toys and the home we are lucky enough to have.
3. Speak with a Happy Voice – the aim of this one was to help our children to interact in a positive manner with others … even when they weren’t getting what they wanted. Grizzling could be turned into asking, yelling into negotiating or expressing their unhappiness … this one helped us to teach manners and to mold them more into kids that could relate better in teams and groups.
A family is a community. Even if its just 2 people its a community and communities have a culture that continually shapes the members and their interactions. Obviously no set of rules or guidelines is perfect and neither is any family. When I look back on our 3 simple rules or guidelines I think that they worked well as a simple framework that was easy to remember as a constant reference point.
Do you have a similar set of ‘rules’ or a way to help define your family’s culture?
