Welcome to our lesson on rules
- In this section, you will learn
- What rules are
- Why rules are important
- How to use rules to improve behaviors
rules overview
What are rules?
- Guidelines or expectations for how you want your child to act
-
Effective rules have three important parts:
1) Clear, specific, positively stated expectation for the child’s behavior.
2) Positive consequences for following the rules.
3) Negative consequences for breaking the rules.
What do rules sound like?
- There are 2 rules at the store. You must either hold my hand or the cart, and you must keep your hands to yourself. If you follow the rules, you can walk the whole time. If you break the rule, you will have to sit in the cart.
- In our house we speak with kindness and respect. When you follow the rule, people enjoy speaking with you. If you break the rule, you will need to spend 2 minutes by yourself.
- Our rule is you have to try one bite of everything on your plate. If you follow the rule, you can have dessert. If you do not try everything, you will not get dessert.
Rules live in action
Why are rules important?
Click below to read more:
When rules are unspoken or vague, children might not know they are breaking the rule. Clear rules that tell children what to do make sure everyone knows what is expected.
Think of the taunt, “I’m not touching you” while holding a finger one inch from the sibling’s face. If the rule is “Don’t touch your sibling,” the child is technically following the rule. Similarly, if the rule is not clear (“behave” or “be good”), your child is more likely to find loopholes.
Positive consequences make children feel good about what they’ve done. They can involve
- time (“if you follow the rule, we can have an extra 10 minutes of play time”)
- activities (“if you follow the rule, you can choose which game we play”)
- items (“if you follow the rule, I will get you a treat”)
- child-specific privileges (“if you follow the rule, you can wear a dress today;” “if you follow the rule, you can keep bring your bear to the appointment.”).
Make sure the consequence is doable for you and meaningful for your child.
Most people don’t like to give negative consequences. But, they keep children safe.
Negative consequences for breaking a rule should
- be something your child cares about
- make sense for the rule
- For example, not going to a friend’s birthday party does not make sense as a consequence for forgetting to put shoes away
- happen right after the rule is broken
- be easy for you to enforce
- last for just that day
- Each morning, children should have a chance to follow the rules and have positive consequences
- never involve physical punishment or taking away your 5 minutes of Daily Care Playtime.
Children are learning how to act. They need help to know what is safe and not safe. Rules also reassure children that their caregiver can keep them safe. They do well and feel safe when there is structure and when there are clear expectations of behaviors.
Children will need to know how to follow rules at school and when doing community activities or sports.
Rules also teach children how to be good citizens and how to socialize. For example, saying please and thank you might be a rule when someone has done something nice for you or is kind to you.
When and how should I use rules?
Learn how rules can be used by selecting a specific difficult behavior below.
More: Learn how rules can be used by selecting a specific positive behavior/goal below.
Pay attention to how you use rules
Click below to read more:
Create fewer rules that you can enforce consistently. This is better than lots of rules that you sometimes enforce and sometimes don’t.
Once you set a rule, make sure you remember the rule and enforce it all the time.
If you say you will do something, do it. This teaches children to trust you and is needed to change behavior.
If your child earns a positive consequence for following a rule, they should not lose it based on what they do later.
If your child breaks a rule and has a negative consequence, they should not be able to earn it back or undo the consequence.
This is why immediate consequences that make sense for the rule are important. If consequences last too long or are too intense, you may not want to follow through.
caregiver Voices
Other caregivers share how they use rules at home:
“[At bath time] I have to say it every single night – but I set the rules where ‘gentle hands, we don’t splash and there’s no outs and ins’. Of course they still splash every once in a while, but it has improved drastically. I mean I was having to use three to four towels just to wipe down my bathroom every single night to get it dry [before PC-CARE]. And that was one of those things where I had no idea what to do. I had no idea how to fix it. And that’s completely changed.”
“The changes that I noticed, he just seemed more aware of the fact that there would be consequences for behaviors, or that if he did something the right way there would be praise for it. And he would keep doing it over and over because he liked the attention that he would get from doing things that were appropriate.”
How would you use rules?
The rule is: Crayons must stay on the paper.
If you follow the rule: You can continue drawing as long as you want.
If you break the rule: I will put the crayons away.
Rule: The dinner table is a device-free zone. We must all put our devices away when we eat.
If you follow the rule: You can have your device back after the meal.
If you break the rule: I will put your device away for 20 minutes after the meal.
The rule is: You must stay close to me when we are walking, three cement squares or less away.
If you follow the rule: You can walk freely and I will know you are safe.
If you break the rule: You will have to hold my hand so I know you are safe.
Ideas for fun rules activities
Select Below
2-10 minutes
Teach your child why rules are so helpful with the no rules game. Set out a bunch of game pieces and say go. With no rules, your child won’t know how to win. This is very frustrating, so play for just a short time. You could also watch this video together and talk about what happens.
My plan for rules
Think about how you can use rules at home.
Hooray! You've learned a new skill: Rules
Login/Enroll to track your progress and mark this lesson complete.
