Rules or Responsibilities?

Are you a rule breaker or do you follow them to the letter? Do you blindly accept that rules are made for your protection or do you believe that rules are meant to be broken? Maybe you are one who walks the middle ground, who has respect for rules as long as they aren’t unreasonable.

When we are growing up there are rules for us everywhere. Our parents create rules for us to follow for our protection or well being. Don’t talk to strangers. Be home by a certain curfew. Take a shower. Change your clothes. Eat your vegetables.

School has rules to follow as well. Don’t run in the halls. Be on time for class. Make sure you are in your seat when the bell rings. These are for our safety and to teach us lessons. Being prompt teaches time management. Running in the halls is dangerous.

What happens when you are grown up? When you are 18 and out of school? Parents and teachers are no longer responsible for your safety or your well being. You may be living in your parents house, but legally you are now your own individual person. If you get in trouble with the law, your parents don’t pay the fine or to to jail. You do.

Rules teach us to follow blindly. We trust that the person making the rules has our best interests at heart. But rules don’t teach us how to make decisions with the information we have. At the end of the rules is responsibility.

Once a person “comes of age” or is “of legal age”, which is 18 here in Wisconsin where I live, they are responsible for their decisions. And every decision made can have very far reaching consequences. A very good example is a young woman who chooses to have unprotected sex one night. That one second decision which created a child within her will affect her the rest of her life.

As teenagers grow up they should start to learn what responsibility is. The parents should be giving them chances to show they are responsible. They can do this with chores and curfews. When a child respects these responsibilities and takes them on, he shows he knows what responsibility is.

But this goes two ways. As rules (controls) come off the child and he receives responsibilities instead, it is time for the parent to begin treating the child more as an adult and allowing them to make some of their own decisions. A good parent will accept the decision of the child even if it doesn’t agree with their own. It’s how children learn their own power in making decisions. If their decisions are always put down or ignored they will learn they can never make a right decision. It will have a bad effect on their emotional and mental maturity.

Sometimes the rules aren’t there as much to protect the child as they are for the parent to exert control or force on the child. It is a way of bullying the child using the authority of the parent to enforce it. Children in this environment never learn how to grow up and make responsible decisions. They know only to obey rules. They can’t think for themselves.

As an adult we often trade rules for responsibilities. We begin to stand up to our parents against rules we think are unfair. Maybe it starts with the curfew hour. They learn to negotiate for another hour. It teaches negotiation skills. When the parent allows the extra hour it teaches the child that they can change the world a little at a time if they work at it.

If they abuse the extra hour they learn that decisions have consequences. The parent will punish them for whatever they have done wrong. Perhaps the parent takes away not only the extra hour, but also one they already had. The child learns.

Children who only know rules and not responsibilities have a hard time adjusting to the real world when it hits them. They don’t know how to make decisions or think for themselves, but rather they wait until someone makes a rule telling them how to behave and what to do. They are little more than trained monkeys.

Children who learn responsibilities and their consequences can better adjust to being thrown into an adult world. They are prepared for life. They are ready to weigh their decisions for the best possible outcome in their life.

Rules have a place in our lives. I’ve always been a rule breaker, but not a careless rule breaker. I weigh my options carefully before deciding to take a stand against a particular rule, or even to break that rule. But I have always accepted responsibility for my actions. If there is punishment due for breaking a rule, I can accept it gracefully because I know it is earned. But sometimes, breaking a rule has resulted in a change to an unfair rule. And I am rewarded.