Family Rules Everyone Can Follow

Anyone else have a love/hate relationship with rules? Just about everything seems to have a set of rules or at least guidelines to live by, some type of parameters that can be enforced. We parents set rules to keep our families safe, secure, healthy and kind in particular ways. But let’s be real, the times for enforcing those rules seem to crop up most inconveniently. Of course, we already know parenting isn’t easy and there’s no simple instruction manual for how to raise good kids, so we do our best. And that means rules.

But rules are tricky. Even though we all have them, only a few seem to overlap. Every family upholds different rules. It’s hard enough at home when you have to enforce your standards, frequently dropping everything to do so. It’s harder still when you’re outside your home and you must enforce someone else’s rules. Kids wonder why they, all of a sudden, can do something they weren’t allowed to do before and vice versa.  

Teaching rules to our children is a monumental challenge. Tots are learning so much, but they don’t always have the understanding to grasp why they can or cannot do something. Babies and toddlers test every rule as much as they can because they think it’s a game. That constant testing often wears us down or winds us up so tight we lose our tempers. And as kids get older, they sometimes choose to disobey the rules even though they know better. I’ve heard multiple kids tell me, “I don’t care if I get in trouble. I want to do this anyway.” Sound familiar to anyone? Certainly, there are exceptions, but it seems that the older kids get, the more they like to push, bend and manipulate the limits.

Below are some rules that seem to apply to many families. See which ones you have in common—and maybe get some fresh ideas, too.

Safety First: No matter what ages your kids are, they are physically clumsy but intent on testing some type of boundary. Learning to walk, climbing stairs, riding bikes, scaling heights, going fast on something—these are just a few of their adventures.  Their explorations naturally require some safety rules, guidelines about crossing streets and parking lots, following speed limits (if you have teen drivers) and getting adult supervision around sharp objects or fire.

I laugh a little as I write this safety part, because I think this is common sense stuff. But the more I observe people—myself included—the more I see that basic safety isn’t always foremost in people’s minds. I too often find myself running after my own kids, friends’ kids or my nieces and nephews because I was distracted by general busyness. And every parent feels like a  broken record at times, shouting warnings to kids who start to dart into the street after a ball or fail to watch for cars while they’re riding bikes.  

Picking Up After Themselves:  When I was a kid, I was terrible at this. My room was never clean. It’s been a life lesson for me that keeping things picked up is a good rule of thumb—but it’s easier said than done. With all their activities and the general distractions of childhood, kids move rapidly from one thing to the next, and so do we parents! We all function better, though, when we operate in a reasonably tidy environment.  

The earlier you can get kids into the habit of picking up after themselves the better. The family will step on fewer sharp edges and be able to find things quickly when they’re needed. Recognize that you’ll have exceptionally long days and weeks—or returns from trips—that will just overwhelm your home with clutter. That’s life. But work at chipping away at the chaos and cultivate little habits of tidiness in your family. You’ll create a semblance of order, and everyone will appreciate the peace and relief that brings.  

Respecting Others:  Whether we are in public or behind closed doors, respecting others and their things is always a good rule to follow. From an early age, our children need to see us honoring the humanity of others, respecting their beliefs and treating their possessions with care. We also have to actively teach those attitudes and behaviors. We teach kids at a young age to share their toys or snacks. We teach them to try not to break things. (Kids are hard on everything, so that’s a real feat.) We teach them to speak kindly and respectfully and listen empathetically, no matter who the other person is—just like they’d want to be treated. Following the old Golden Rule doesn’t come naturally, but the effort we spend teaching it is worth it.   

Rules are easy to break and frustrating to enforce but so necessary. One thing I’ve learned is rules work better, and kids follow them better, if everyone follows them—including the adults. Kids learn by example and by consistent instruction and enforcement. They may not always understand rules are there for their own good and protection, but we parents need to give them the boundaries and structure they need to thrive as growing humans and, someday, independent adults. Think through the rules and values you want to teach your kids, then be purposeful as a family about building those habits. You’ll be laying a solid foundation.

Lauren Dreher lives in Stilwell with her husband and two toddlers.