Rules?

J. and I have done a few interviews this past week because of the documentary and have several more on the calendar. (It's more than a little weird, by the way.) Consequently, we have been asked a lot of questions. The vast majority of questions are pretty much the same and are not that much different from the questions I get regularly just living my life. Every so often, though, we get a question that makes us pause because no one has ever asked it before. Tonight's was, "Do you have any hard and fast rules in your house." 

J. and I paused for so long thinking about it that the interviewer thought she had lost the connection. In our current parenting mode, we actually couldn't think of any. J. came up with "Be Kind". (In our earlier, pre-connected parenting mode, I'm sure I could have come up with more than a few. But, when you know better you do better, so I'll leave it at that.) It kind of stumped us. To confirm, L. happened to be in the kitchen while we were making dinner, so we asked her if there were any hard and fast family rules that she could think of. She paused for moment, said, "Nope," took another cracker, put some cheese on it, and went on her merry way. 

The only other rule I could possible think of that was even sort of inviolable was, "Don't bring books with poor grammar into the house." This stems from when A. had checked out a stack of Junie B. Jones books from the library and had them next to her as she was reading one of them. J. happened to pick one up and glance through it. He was so appalled at the grammar and poor writing in the book that he decreed that poor little Junie was not welcome to show her face in our house again. It is probably the only book that has been outright banned. 

I hadn't really realized that we don't really live by rules. Sure there are guidelines we have, such as...

• Be considerate of one another
• Watch your tone (what you are really saying underneath the words)
• Have decent table manners
• Don't talk while I'm reading out loud
• Be helpful

But depending on the day, not everyone is capable of managing these. We work with what we have. We support the children who need help to be successful. The rules are certainly not more important than the child. And honestly? The adults are not always capable of managing all of these all the time, either. Sometimes adults need to go take a break, too. 

At some point we made a shift from a rule-based home to a person-centered home. The rule question just seemed to highlight how much of a change we had made without really realizing it. I found it interesting. I'm sure over the next week you will have to deal with me processing more of this interviewing stuff. 

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One of the first articles to be published from all this interviewing business. Chicago Parent Hayden and Her Family Article