Why Kids Make Up Their Own House Rules (And The Funny One My Whole Family Follows Now)
The other Tuesday, I stumbled in the front door at 6:12 PM, rain dripping off my coat, a 12-pack of sparkling tea leaking through the bottom of the grocery bag. I dropped the whole mess on the doormat and made a beeline for the under-sink cabinet for paper towels, before the water seeped into the entryway rug we already stained with spaghetti last month. Before I got three steps, I heard a small, very firm voice from the couch: “Mom. You forgot.”
I turned around to see my 4-year-old daughter Lila standing by the coffee table, goldfish crumbs still on the hem of her unicorn pajamas, hands planted firmly on her hips. Our tabby cat Mochi didn’t even lift her head from her favorite window seat cushion, where she’d been napping since 2 that afternoon. But I knew immediately what I’d done. I’d broken Lila’s rule.
A couple months back, Lila announced the rule at Sunday dinner, out of nowhere. We’d all just gotten home from a day trip to the zoo, everyone had dropped their bags and started talking about ice cream and why the giraffe didn’t come over to the fence, and no one had said anything to Mochi. Lila frowned at all of us, tapped her spoon on her wooden kids’ bowl, and said, “From now on, when you come in the door, you have to say hi to Mochi before you do anything else. That’s the rule.”
My husband and I glanced at each other, bit back our laughs, and said okay. We figured it would last 2 days, max, before she forgot about it and moved on to the next big thing. But that’s not what happened. When my mom came to visit the next weekend, she forgot the rule, and Lila made her walk back outside, shut the door, and re-enter just to greet Mochi properly. When our regular babysitter forgot last month, Lila reminded her so gently but so firmly that now the first thing Sam does when she walks in is say hi to Mochi before she asks how Lila’s day was. Even I, the person who swears she doesn’t have time for extra nonsense on busy weekdays, automatically say hi now if I’m coming back from getting the mail or walking the neighbor’s dog.
At first I thought it was just a funny quirk, the kind of silly kid thing you mention to a friend over coffee and move on. But after a couple months of following this rule, I started thinking about what’s really going on when kids make up their own rules for the whole house to follow.
Most of the time, when we talk about rules with little kids, we’re talking about the ones adults make: no running into the street, hold my hand in the parking lot, put your toys away before bed, no cookies before dinner. Lila’s whole day is made up of rules other people made for her. Making her own rule, and getting everyone else to follow it, lets her practice being the one in charge for a change. It’s not that she’s being bossy, even when she makes my brother go back outside to re-do his entrance. She’s testing out what it feels like to set a structure that matters to her, and see how it works.
When I finally asked her one night why the rule was so important, I got even more insight. She was sitting on the bathroom counter while I brushed her teeth, and I said, “Why do we all have to say hi to Mochi first when we come in?” She paused, thought for a second, and said, “When you come to get me from preschool, I hate when you talk to Ms. Sarah first before you say hi to me. Mochi waits here all day. She wants the first hello, too.”
That stopped me. She wasn’t just making a random rule for fun. She was taking how she feels when she’s overlooked, and transferring that to the creature she loves most, and making a rule to fix it. That’s empathy in action, before any preschool teacher ever talks to her about what empathy is.
The thing I’ve started telling other parents who ask about this is that you don’t have to push back on every silly kid-made rule. If the rule isn’t dangerous, and it doesn’t add more than a minute to your day, just go along with it. You don’t have to humor them in some patronizing way, just do it. If you have 30 seconds to spare, ask them why they made the rule, like I did. It doesn’t have to be a big conversation, just a quick question that lets them practice putting their feelings and ideas into words. If the rule is a little inconvenient, you can suggest a small compromise, instead of throwing the whole thing out. When I told Lila I can’t always stop if I’m carrying 10 grocery bags, she agreed I could wave while I say hello, instead of stopping to pet Mochi first. That’s practice with negotiation, too.
I know a lot of parents worry that letting kids make the rules will lead to them being disrespectful or demanding, but that hasn’t been our experience. Lila doesn’t throw fits when we tell her no to something that actually matters, like having candy for breakfast. She gets that some rules are non-negotiable, and this one is hers.
A lot of the time, we as parents are so focused on teaching our kids how to follow the rules we’ve made that we forget they need space to make their own, too. It’s how they learn that their ideas matter, that their observations of the world count, and that taking care of other people (or cats) can be part of how we live together.
Lila’s already talking about a new rule that all bedtime stories have to end with a song, so it’s only a matter of time before the Mochi greeting is pushed out for a new household mandate. For now, though, it fits. Mochi still doesn’t seem to care one way or another—she just flicks her tail and goes back to napping most of the time. But I’ve noticed I slow down for 2 whole seconds when I walk in the door now, instead of rushing straight to the next thing on my to-do list. That’s a side effect none of us expected, and one I’m not mad about.
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