“House Rules” that rule!

By Randy Cale, PH.D

I receive many questions from parents about how to establish rules that really stick. Many parents struggle with daily life where they repeatedly fine tune the rules and struggle with their children who don’t appear to honor the rules in place.
This occurs because they make several critical errors. Below are the mistakes and simple corrections that will keep you (and your kids) on the right track.

Critical Mistake One: Too many rules.
The more rules you have in your home, the more violations there will be. This leads to constant intervention and decision-making about consequences. If you have a difficult or strong willed child, this will mean you are frequently adding consequence upon consequence, and the environment begins to feel very punitive and negative.
Solution: Have just a few essential rules.
Rather than dozens of rules, focus on the critical rules that will maintain structure and routine. If you understand how to manage behavior using the leverage you possess in your home, this is not too difficult to do. In fact, it is easier to manage your home, and to maintain order and sanity with just a few decisive rules, than it is when you have a lot of rules that you can’t keep up with.

Critical Mistake Two: Setting rules that we don’t follow.
This is one of the biggest mistakes that we make. We establish guidelines for our children and then we violate them repeatedly.
For example, no disrespectful talk in the home might be a rule. Yet, we compromise that rule and yell in an ugly voice to our children. We may not think of this as disrespect, but if we had a video camera sitting on our child’s forehead and we played it back for the world to see, I suspect that it would appear quite disrespectful.
Another common rule would be not eating in front of the TV. Yet, our children repeatedly finding us chomping down a late night snack in front of the Letterman show, and we pretend that this won’t matter.
We tell the children they are getting pudgy, so we limit their snacks. But, they watch us eating chips and ice cream during ball games, in turn gaining weight and not exercising. We can pretend these little things don’t matter, but they do.
Solution: We walk our talk.
If we set a rule, then we have got to be willing to follow it ourselves. Now, there are certainly rules that apply to children that don’t apply to adults. Many of these are built into every fabric and structure of our lives, and thus children see it repeated over and over. These are not problematic, because, like it or not, they reflect reality.
The problem occurs in more of the ongoing, day to day routines where we expect our children to do one thing and then we do another. It’s hard to keep a household going in a peaceful, loving way when we set up our lives in this manner.

Critical Mistake Three: Setting rules that do not reflect reality.
I find that every parent has a positive intention behind their rules. However, many of these rules don’t reflect the reality we live in, and oftentimes both parent and child waste energy.
For example, we can waste extraordinary amounts of energy by focusing on rules that are arbitrary and have no real life parallel. Examples could be, “At our home, you don’t eat with your elbows on the table.” Or, “You must put away your shoes first and then you can hang up your coat.”
Solution: Have reality based rules.
“You can’t eat unless you wash your hands.” Learning to wash our hands before eating tends to be supportive of health. Good rule.
“You lose it if you throw it inside.” Good rule. It preserves what we care about.
“You will repair it, or replace it, if you have a tantrum and break it.” Good rule. Again, it parallels what happens in the real world.
The more we can stick with reality, the more we establish rules that really make sense, and more importantly, reality based rules prepare our children for the future.
Remember: Keep it simple. Minimize the number of rules. Walk your talk and keep focused on rules that reflect reality.

Dr. Randy Cale, a Clifton Park based parenting expert, author, speaker and licensed psychologist, offers practical guidance for a host of parenting concerns. Dr. Cale’s new website, www.TerrificParenting.com offers valuable free parenting information and an e-mail newsletter.