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Rules or Structure?

For the last 9 months, we've had an exchange student from Germany living at our house.  He was asked to speak in church two weeks ago (although he is not a member of our church) and he shared with the congregation that we have a lot of rules at our house, focusing on how early we get up.  This got a good laugh from the audience.

During the rest of church, we got a lot of feedback about that comment, with people wondering what all our rules are.  I was feeling quite embarrassed and maybe defensive about this and wondering if our rules really are over the top.  Certainly our children complain about them now and then.  (But what child doesn't?)
Then today, a friend from church told me how she overheard a conversation back in April where my 14-year-old daughter was asked if we have a lot of rules at our house.  My daughter responded no.  She doesn't think we have a lot of rules.  How refreshing to hear that!

As I explained to my friend, my daughter loves structure and is very good about doing what we ask her to do.  So to her, we don't have rules as much as we have structure.  Then it occurred to me that I shouldn't call them rules--that sounds arbitrary, like we're control freaks running a military school.  Instead I should call them structure and guidance and high expectations.

There are so many things we need to teach our children:  life skills like cooking and cleaning, how to take care of themselves, how to succeed in school, how to work hard, how to be disciplined, how to be on time, etc.  Additionally, we need to show them what our priorities are.  For example, family scripture study, having dinner together, having family home evening on Monday nights, going to church on Sunday and on and on. 
 


How could we accomplish that with our large family if we didn't have some structure to our day?

I had good parents but I wished for greater structure and higher expectations.  I'm giving my children what I wanted as a child.  When they're parents, maybe they'll give their children something different and that is completely fine.

So there it is.  When people say something about our rules I'm going to tell them it's not rules.  It's Structure!  Guidance!  High Expectations!

Comments

  1. DataDavidJune 14, 2015 at 11:45 AM

    I think that is a very good way to think about it. It has occasionally come up in my conversations, but when they hear that I have many siblings, people usually say - that makes a lot of sense, otherwise that big a family wouldn't work very well. I found the high expectations quite motivating and effective.

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