The Rules Kids Follow Are the Ones They Helped Create
By Kris Geering, M.A., Certified ADHD Educator
"We don't talk to each other like that."
"Your dishes don't walk themselves to the sink."
"Did you brush your teeth? Are you sure? Show me the toothbrush."
Every parent has some version of this. You know there are rules. You know your kid knows there are rules. And yet here you are again, saying the same sentence in the same tired voice, wondering whether anyone is listening or whether you're just the background audio track.
Here's the thing: the problem may not be the rule itself. It may be that the rule arrived fully formed, from above. It might be how the rule has been communicated. It might be the consistency of how that rule has been enforced.
The fix for that? An old teacher trick for setting things up that first week of school.
What Teachers Do Every Year
Walk into a well-run classroom in the first week of the year and you'll often find the teacher sitting on the rug with twenty kids, asking a deceptively simple question: What do we need in order to have a great year together?
The kids answer. The teacher writes it down — in the kids' words, not hers. The teacher facilitates the conversation, helping children think through what would be truly helpful, how to communicate their thoughts, and how to be respectful of others while doing so.
The list gets narrowed, shaped, and posted on the wall. For younger children, there’s a picture next to each line so the children who aren't reading yet can still "read" it.
And then that poster gets used. All year. It becomes the go-to reference and reminder. When something goes sideways in November, the teacher doesn't launch into a lecture. She walks over, points, and says, "What did we agree about this one?" And as the year goes on, those rules may need to change as the children grow. So the rules get revisited, everyone has buy-in, and classroom management gets a little easier.
With this model, the children are not being instructed. They are being included. They helped build the thing they are now being held to, and that changes everything about how it lands.
🐠 Dive Deep: Building Boundaries Together Helps Kids Feel Safe and Seen
In the S.C.U.B.A. Approach — See the Child Under the Behavior, then Adapt — one of the five Adapt levers is reinforce boundaries. Not soften them. Not remove them. Reinforce them, with warmth.
That word trips people up, because we tend to hear "boundaries" and picture a crackdown. But a boundary is not a punishment. A boundary is information: this is where the edge is, and here's what happens at the edge. Children — especially neurodivergent children whose internal sense of structure is still very much under construction — feel safer when the edges are visible.
The question is never should there be rules. There should. The question is where the rules come from, and whether your child experiences them as something done to them or something built with them.
Three things happen when kids co-create the list:
It reduces reactivity. A rule invented in the middle of a meltdown is a reaction. A rule collaborated on during a calm Sunday afternoon is an agreement. (Remember, never teach in the Red Reef. Writing rules together happens in the Green Reef, when everyone's nervous system has the capacity to think. You can find more on Regulation Reef here.)
It builds brains. Deciding what the family needs, weighing one idea against another, imagining a future situation you're not currently in, noticing your own patterns honestly enough to name them — that's planning, flexible thinking, and self-observation. Straight out of the dynamic dozen, you’re supporting executive function and problem-solving skills.
It takes the burden off of you. When the agreement is on the wall, simply point to it. That picture says the words so you don’t have to.
Remember: A rule defines a boundary, but doesn't automatically hand your child the skills to stay inside it. That part is still your job — and co-creating the list is where the teaching starts.
🪸 Build Your Reef: The Family Meeting
You need about forty-five minutes, a snack, a large sheet of paper, and a marker. That's it.
Pick your moment carefully. Avoid times you know will be challenging, like the night before school starts or after a hard morning. Instead, plan on a weekend afternoon when everyone is fed, reasonably rested, and not in the middle of something they'd rather be doing. If you have the plan and you or your child isn’t in the green reef, postpone it. It won’t be worth it, and the struggle will undo all the connection you’re trying to build.
Open with the goal, not the problem. Try: "I want our house to feel like a place everybody actually likes being. What do we need so that happens?" Notice that question doesn't open with a list of grievances or put anyone on trial. Instead, it invites your child in and puts you both on the same team.
Let them go first, and write down everything. Every suggestion goes on the paper, including the ridiculous ones. "Ice cream is a food group" goes on the list. You're not committing to anything yet — you're showing them that their ideas are welcome here, which is the entire point.
Reshape the ridiculous. When something can't work, don't shut it down. Say, "Let's figure out how that could work." Ice cream as a food group becomes a Friday dessert night. A kid who proposes "no bedtime" is usually telling you that bedtime feels like being shoved out of the family — which is worth knowing, and worth solving separately. The goal here is to help your child feel heard, which means listening to what’s going on underneath the words.
Write rules toward something, not away from it. "No hitting" tells a child what to stop. "We keep our hands safe" tells them what to do. Same boundary, and the second version gives their brain a direction to go. Use their words wherever you can. "We don't yuck someone's yum" is a better line than anything I'd write, and a child will remember it because it's theirs.
Keep it short. Five to seven for school-age kids. Fewer for the little ones (more on that below). A list of eighteen rules isn't a family agreement; it's a legal document.
Everybody signs it. This includes you!
Post it everywhere life actually happens — the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom — anyplace those rules are needed. You can even create a smaller version for the car or travel bag. Oh, and be sure your child can easily see it. Consider what their eye level is, and if anything might be blocking it from their POV.
The Three Kinds of Rules Every List Needs
(Most families skip the first two, but hoo, boy, are they important!)
1. How We Treat Others
This is the heart of the list. Not only does it help your home feel warm, it reinforces your family’s values.
We are kind.
We use our words when we can, and ask for help when we can’t.
We knock before we go into someone's room.
All feelings are welcome.
That last one deserves a note. Feelings are never the thing we're regulating against — a home where sadness and frustration and fury are allowed to exist out loud is a home where kids don't have to hide. It’s also how kids learn to manage those big feelings in healthy ways.
2. How We Fix Our Mistakes
This might be the most valuable one on the wall. Conflict is a healthy part of co-existing with others. Deciding in advance what you do about it means nobody has to invent a plan while dysregulated.
Write the repair steps out on that big piece of paper, in order, in kid language:
When we fight, we fix it.
Stop. Take a breath. (Take space first if you need it — and then come back.)
Say what happened, from your side only.
Say what you needed.
Ask what they needed.
Decide together what we'll do next time.
When it comes to the repair rules in particular, keep in mind this critical component: you go first. The day you lose your temper — and you will, because you're human — you walk over to the poster, point at the rule, and run the steps in front of them. Nothing you say about repair will teach half as much as watching you.
A word on “I’m sorry.”
Sometimes, the repair is more one-sided, especially with toddlers and preschoolers. One thing I’ve seen over and over after 30 years of working with families of young children is one child literally harming another. It might be whacking them on the head with the toy both wanted. It might be losing control and flailing, kicking, or even biting. (Yep, totally normal behavior for the little ones.)
While I thought I’d learned this as a teacher, I got a whole new level of insight as a parent! When the twins were still in preschool, we had lots and lots of big feelings in their little bodies. And sometimes the rules were forgotten, bodies got out of control, and, well, let’s just say that while no one lost any teeth there were a couple of times that was a real concern.
Once we’d cleaned up the blood, gotten out the ice pack, and had some time in separate corners, it was time to repair. But even as a mom to the kid who got hurt AND the perpetrator (SO different!), I never insisted on, “I’m sorry.” Instead, I focused on the relationship between them.
“You really hurt your sister/brother. What can you do to help them feel better?” Since they’re twins, they’ve known one another better than anyone else from the beginning. They knew what their sibling needed. Special blankie. The big Chase doll. A fresh ice bag. And usually an offer along the lines of, “Do you want a hug?”
Often they wanted to say sorry because they were sorry, and that was fine. But I was very clear: “Saying you’re sorry does not fix the damage you’ve done. Let’s figure out what you can do to mend things.”
This is important for parents (and teachers), because words with no action are pretty empty…and they can even teach kids to lie. What if they’re not sorry in that moment? Demanding someone to say they’re sorry when they’re not, and then moving on doesn’t repair anything. (You could argue it does produce politicians, but that’s probably another post. Or possibly a book.)
Instead, focus on helping your child recognize how their actions impacted the other person. Something like naming feelings is way more beneficial than an empty, “sorry,” as it supports the development of empathy, and practices the path to true repair. “I’m sorry” becomes optional, and isn’t the replacement for actually mending what’s been broken.
The practical layer, where dishes and brushing teeth live.
We put our own dishes in the dishwasher.
We brush our teeth every night before books.
We put our shoes in the bin when we come in.
We clean up one thing before we start the next thing.
A few guardrails from The Magic of Chores apply here. Assign by ability, not by age. Break larger tasks into smaller parts. And never, ever let a chore become a consequence. The moment cleaning the bathroom is what happens when you mess up, you've taught your child that contributing to the family is a punishment. That one is very hard to undo.
🚫 Rules that don't belong on the list: anything about feelings a child isn't allowed to have, anything one specific kid will read as being about them, and anything you're not genuinely willing to enforce on a Tuesday when you're exhausted.
Make It Something They Can Actually Read
If your child isn't reading yet — or is reading, but not when they're upset, which is most children — the words alone won't carry it. Here are a few tips to make this work for your family:
Use photographs of your own kids doing the thing. A picture of your actual four-year-old putting her actual plate on the actual counter beats any clipart on earth.
One image per rule. Simple, obvious, uncluttered.
Laminate it and attach the pictures with velcro so you can swap, reorder, or pull one out to carry with you.
Hang it low. If they can't see it without looking up at an adult, it isn't theirs.
(If you'd rather not build from scratch, the routine and visual support cards in the Toolbox are made for exactly this.)
A Special Section for Preschoolers: Small Lists for Small People
Here's where I want to slow down, because this is where families most often overshoot, with the best of intentions.
A four-year-old cannot hold a seven-item list in working memory. They can't hold three items reliably, most days. But that doesn't mean they can't co-create their rules — it means the rules need to come in much smaller packages, attached to the specific moment they apply to.
So instead of one big house list, make tiny lists for the hard parts of the day. Three rules each. Pictures for every one. Posted where that routine happens — and read together right before you walk into the situation, not in the middle of it.
That last move is what turns a rule into support instead of a correction.
Going to the Park
Posted by the door, read in the car before you get out.
We hold hands until we get past the gate.
We tell a grown-up before we go somewhere new.
Two more turns, then we walk to the car.
That third one matters more than it looks. "Five more minutes" is abstract — a preschooler cannot feel five minutes. "Two more times down the slide" is something they can count, watch, and prepare for. Count it, don't clock it. Leaving the park gets dramatically easier when your child knows exactly how much park is left, in units they understand.
Getting Ready in the Morning
Posted at eye level in their room or the hallway.
Get dressed first, then play.
We eat breakfast at the table.
Shoes on when the song starts.
Pick one song, use it every day, and let it do the nagging for you. The song becomes the transition cue, and you get to stop being the timer. (Movement, music, and visuals are three of the four ways to scaffold a routine — you're stacking all of them here.)
Mealtimes
Posted in the kitchen.
Wash hands, then sit down.
We stay at the table until mealtime is done.
We carry our plate to the sink.
Three rules. Not one word about eating. A preschool mealtime agreement is about the shape of the meal — arriving, staying, leaving — and leaving food out of it keeps the table a place your child wants to come back to.
Co-creating with a four-year-old looks different, and that's fine. You won't get a brainstorm. You'll get: "What do we need so leaving the park doesn't feel so yucky? Should we say two more slides, or three?" They choose between two options you can both live with. That choice is real, they'll remember making it, and that’s what you really need.
Using It
A poster made in September and ignored by October is craft time, not a system. Three habits keep it alive:
Point, don't lecture. Walk over. Tap the line. "What did we agree about this one?" Let them tell you. You've just handed the thinking back to them instead of doing it for them.
Pre-teach before the hard moment. In the car before the party. At the door outside the store. Thirty seconds of "what are our three?" beforehand prevents a whole lot of headaches.
Notice out loud when it works. "You were so frustrated and you took space and came back. That's rule four. That's hard, and you did it." Naming it is what turns a behavior into an identity.
🏊 Teach Them to Swim: Revisit, Revise, Repeat
Put a family meeting on the calendar every couple of months with the goal of reviewing the rules. Ask these questions:
Which rules are working?
Which one keeps getting broken — and what's making it hard?
Is there anything we need to add now that we didn't need before?
Is there anything we don’t need anymore?
That second question is crucial. A rule that gets broken every single day usually isn't a defiance problem; it's a design problem. Either the skill isn't there yet, the environment is working against it, or the expectation was set for a child slightly older than the one you have. Icebergs drift. What worked in the fall may need adapting by spring — and adapting is not caving. It's the A in S.C.U.B.A.
Over time, something quietly wonderful happens. Your kids start proposing amendments. They start holding you to rule four. They start settling disputes without you because the steps are on the wall and they know them by heart.
That's the long game. Not compliance, but competence. A child who knows how a household works because they helped figure things out, and who will one day build their own.
Getting started: a one-week plan
Day 1: Pick the meeting time and tell everyone it's coming. ("Sunday after lunch we're deciding some family stuff together.")
Day 2–3: Quietly notice which moments are hardest in your house. Not to make a case — just so you know what needs covering.
Day 4: Hold the meeting. (Abort if the vibe is wrong! Better to reschedule than turn this into an awful memory.) Everything goes on the paper. Narrow to five to seven (or three per routine, for the little ones). Everyone signs.
Day 5: Make it visual. Take the photos, print, laminate, hang it low.
Day 6–7: Use it daily, while things are going well. Build the habit before you need it.
Co-creating your rules won't end the hard mornings. What it will do is change who's carrying them. Right now, you're the rule, the reminder, the enforcement, and the appeal court, all day, every day. Building the agreement together hands some of that back — to the poster on the wall, and eventually to your kids. That's less for you to hold, and more for them to grow into.
Want help building this for your specific kid? That's exactly the kind of thing we work on together. Book a free call and tell me what's happening at your house — I'll be honest with you about whether I can help.
Kris Geering, M.A., is a Certified ADHD Educator, early intervention specialist, and parent coach with over 30 years of experience. She is the founder of Let Us Learn Together and the creator of the S.C.U.B.A. Approach.
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