The Rule Book

As a parent finding fun and exciting ways to have your young children follow the rules can be challenging.  My son, the oldest, has hit the “I do it” stage and has gotten much worse when listening to the house rules.  We’ve always done time-outs, and they just don’t seem to work the best.  One weekend he got so bad we took every single thing out of his room.  We then reminded him of the rules and installed an iPad app to track his progress.  It seemed to go well for a few weeks, now he’s back at it.

He also recently started pre-school and this semester his teacher has been giving them “books” to color each week to go along with that week’s agenda.  He is so proud of his books an idea was born!  My husband and I sat down and made a list of a few core rules (for example, No hitting, Use the Potty if you need to go to the bathroom, etc.) .  I took that list and did a Google search for the subject to fine black and white outline drawings of different things (like a toilet).  The rule was placed on top, followed by an image (or two) then at the very bottom a short paragraph explaining the rule further.

Once the book was made we found someone to watch our youngest and sat down with our son for an hour and talked about the rules as he colored the pages.  We then stapled and finished his book and read it every night before going to bed.  We even try to engage him and ask how he did that day with the rules.  So far he loves his book, we haven’t seen a huge amount of progress but it’s only been a few days.

If you do decide to make a rule book, I suggest keeping an electronic copy as it could get destroyed easily, you may want to use it with another child or you may want to add pages.

 

About Amy

Hi, my name is Amy and I’m in my late 20’s. I’m married to an amazing stay at home dad and we have two kids (a Boy and a Girl). I work full time in IT as a Business Analyst and recently went back to school full time for my MBA. My family and my career are both very important to me; I’m constantly trying to find better ways to provide my family with the best.
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