Rules of Parenting
I was considering the four ‘rules’ of parenting that I assembled some years ago:
1) Don’t reward bad behavior
2) No good deed goes unpunished
3) Growth is measured in pain
4) Flexibility is measured in hangman’s rope
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1. Don’t reward bad behavior
You don’t have to punish or discipline misconduct, disrespect, or lack of knowledge/training for each deed, but never do anything by action or apparent acceptance that rewards bad behavior. And do plan a course of instruction, communication, and/or confrontation to correct the problem.
2. No good deed goes unpunished
Picture this. You arrive home from the grocery store, gather the kids, and hand out candy. Next day you walk in the door from wherever. The kids are waiting, but instead of greetings, you catch flack, ‘Where is the candy?’ This is expected behavior. You should expect it. Eventually rules will be thrashed out for such occurences, but that takes conflict and resolution. This rule applies to just about everything you do that starts with ‘The kids will love this!’. That is, unless they really don’t care at all, or hate the gesture. Anyway, no good deed (favor/treat) goes unpunished (for the parent).
3. Growth is measured in pain
Growth is one form of change, and we are all wired to repeat and sharpen skills at what we are doing now. Changing anything in our routine, our expectations, our beliefs is painful. We have to acknowledge that. We get more enjoyment from repeating activities and thoughts that are familiar. This means that you have to be prepared for resistance when you introduce new expectations, new chores, new skills, new responsibilities. Pain, anger, resistance, are natural when we encounter growth and change. The challenge is to teach how to accept and adapt to change to ease transitions in life. (This applies to co-workers, spouses, and other family, too, except we have less latitude about changing how non-children behave. 
4. Flexibility is measured in hangman’s rope
Flexibility of choice of action or thought is often called freedom. When you have a choice, you have more opportunity to make a mistake. The more real choice that you face, the more and graver risk of failing. This rule is about commitment. When you avoid making a choice, you avoid making a mistake — but you do not reduce the risk of making a mistake. A choice, vow, pledge, commitment might be a mistake, but if not then you have reduced the risks of making that mistake. This is how we struggle to make a stable life.
Noticing a church sign aphorisms (’The golden rule is useless unless you take the first step’) led me to realize something.
5) The golden rule is exactly like ‘an eye for an eye’, except you get to keep the eye.
I had never considered that, before yesterday.
Brad K.