Every day Melissa and I struggle to decide what "rules" we need to have for Elizabeth. Sure we have rules about don't play with knives and the kitchen stove will burn you. We tell her to stay out of the street, but I'm really talking about rules with no basis in safety, but things we just want her to do. I'll give you some examples.
When Elizabeth was approaching three years old, her mother and I both tired of carrying her everywhere. She was more than old enough and big enough to walk, but she still wanted to be carried. Looking for an easy way out of this chore, we told her it was a rule that she couldn't be carried anymore after she turned three. She did ask why several times, but we just kept telling her it was the rule. Eventually she bought it and really didn't ask to be carried anymore after turning three. If by some chance she does ask us to carry her today, we just remind her of the rule and that's the end of that discussion.
Another rule was at age five she was old enough to walk herself into school. For virtually the entire school year last year, we took her to school, parked the car and walked into the building with her. As she approached her fifth birthday, we told her it was a rule that she had to walk in by herself when she turned five. Again we got lots of questions, but we just kept saying it was the rule and she accepted that too.
The latest is the rule that once you start kindergarten you don't need to sleep with the bathroom light on. Now, to keep you from thinking we are horrible and make the child sleep in the dark, she has a nightlight in the bathroom, in the hall outside the bathroom, in her bedroom, and we leave a lamp on with a 25 watt blue bulb in it on her dresser. It is never dark in her room. But for some reason, she wanted the bathroom light on as well. I think it was just something she could control. With school starting on Thursday, we've been reminding her of the no bathroom light rule and she even decided it would be good to "practice" sleeping without the bathroom light Sunday and Monday night's this week. We'll see how things go tomorrow, but so far she is good with this new rule as well.
Her doctor reminds us to be careful about having too many rules. "God only had 10" is one of his favorite comments and we are way passed only 10 rules.
I guess as long as they don't really hurt anything, there is no harm in having these kinds of rules. At least not until she figures out we just make up the rules as we go along.
