Hi, my name's Siope. I'm the director of Smarter Parenting. Today I wanted to talk
to you about setting rules that your children won't follow. You know. One of
the most interesting things about working with families over time is that
parents want to institute rules in their home, which is absolutely appropriate, but
having their children comply with those rules, or having them feel like they want
to invest in obeying the rules, that's a whole different story.
Now I was working with a family who had this issue. It was a single mom working
with and she had three children and in working with them she wanted to have
very specific rules because of time constraints. So she would go to work and
she would come home late in the afternoon and she needed specific chores
done before she got there. This is not uncommon for most families, you know. In
the United States, or elsewhere, it's important for kids to follow the chores
and the kids would not follow the chores. They wouldn't follow the rules and they
didn't feel any motivation to follow the rules. So in working with them, you know, I
had to work with the mom first initially to define what are the very specific
rules that she wanted the kids to follow. And that took some time because her
rules were not as specific as they should be. There's a difference between
having a rule of, you know, come home and clean your room. And then her coming home
and feeling like they didn't do the job that she wanted and being very specific
like, "Having, Okay I need you to fix your bed. I need you to pick up all the toys
off the floor. I need you to hang up all your clothes and then take your dirty
clothes to the laundry." I mean those are very specific things that you can
measure and you can tell if they're done or if they're not done. So
we went through and defined all the rules first in the home. She had a list
of about 25 rules that she wanted done in the home. And initially in talking
with her I just let her know that it's pretty unrealistic to go through 25
rules for your children. So we decided to break it down. Initially start off with
few rules first and we start off with three. Okay. And this is based on the
children's ability to comply with the rules because we want the kids to be
successful. We don't want to overwhelm them. At the same time we want to
challenge them. So we set up with three very specific rules that they were to
follow. And with the children though, incorporating them to buy into the rules,
this is where the, this is where the magic happened. In our family meeting as
we met, we went over each of the rules. And they were very descriptive. They knew
exactly what needed to be done. Underneath each of the rules we put down
numbers, one, two, and three. Okay. So you have three rules underneath each rules.
There's, it's numbered, one, two, and three of blank spots and then consequence is
under there. So underneath each of the rules we allowed the children to decide
what a possible reward would be for completing the rule. So the first one was,
"Okay, you need to come home and clean the dishes and the dishes in the sink
and then empty the dishwasher." Simple rule. So the kids saw that and they said,
"okay." And to get their buy-in to obeying the rules they had three options and
they could fill this out how they wanted, but we wanted it to be appropriate to
the task. To the chore. And so they came up with three very specific rewards that
they could receive. One was additional time, thirty more minutes to play their
friends, okay, past the time that mom wanted them to be home.
So mom wanted them home at 6:30 for dinner this would allow them 30 minutes
more, okay. Another reward would be that they
wouldn't have to do that very specific chore the next day, okay. And then one
other reward was that they could get a treat.
So before bed. So cookie or you know whatever they wanted so they could
choose. So from those three rewards then mom, and this is the important part of
this whole process, mom was able to determine what the consequence was if
they did not follow through with the chore. Okay. So the kids didn't choose the
consequence, but they were able to choose three options
for a reward for completing the chore. Now one thing that we paid close
attention to was that the rewards didn't cost any additional money, okay. And they
were things that could be done. They're very easy to to comply with. They weren't
too big for the task. Alright. So we measured all those things to make them
appropriate to the task. And what I found over time is that the kids and the mom
were able to work together. They were able to complete those. The kids were
motivated to do the chore because they were able to get one of three things if
they were to comply. The mom felt more confident in her parenting skills
because she was able to have a rule and have the kids follow the rule. And she
had a consequence there as well that she could follow through with. She didn't
have to think on the top of her head what to do. So before this time if a kid
didn't do chore, I mean she would do these consequences that were huge, and
it's like, you know, "they're gonna be grounded for three weeks and I mean." But
those don't work. And when we talk about consequences you want to make it
appropriate for the size of the behavior. And you don't want to do anything that
actually puts you in a consequence as a parent. I mean when you say, "you're
grounded for three weeks," what you're really saying is, well in order for this
to really work, I'm grounded too because I have to watch you be grounded. So we're
both grounded. And it's just not effective, just not effective. So again
this is a suggestion that you can use as a parent in working with your child. And
setting up rules that actually will work, and get buy-in from your children. You
set up a rule. You be very specific about the rule. You allow your children
to determine three possible rewards and make them appropriate. And they don't
have to cost money. And then the parent will set up a consequence and something
that they can follow through with. Set it up for maybe two or three rules
initially. And as they're able to master those move on to additional rules. And
over time you'll see success in you and your children being able to work through
things. So feel free to send us a comment or a
message. Or any variation of this that you may use with your child. We'd be
interested in learning more about what you're doing in order to help raise
resilient, self-confident, and independent children.