Why My Rule-Following Child Struggled As They Got Older (And What Helps)
I was sitting in a cold plastic folding chair outside my 7th grader’s homeroom last fall, twisting the cheap neon open house lanyard around my wrist, when Ms. Henderson waved me in. She ticked through the usual checks: Lila turns in every assignment early, she helps new students find their lockers, she’s polite to every adult on campus. Then she leaned forward a little. “I notice she shuts down anytime the group doesn’t follow the exact plan we laid out. Last week, her group decided to skip the formal outline the rubric mentioned to do a live demo instead, and Lila refused to participate at all. She just sat in the corner the whole period.”
I left that conference feeling thrown, because for 12 years, Lila’s rule-following had been my go-to brag. When she was 4, she’d stop mid-play at preschool to corral the other kids into putting blocks away before snack time, even when the teacher said it was okay to leave them for five more minutes. When she was 8, she turned down her best friend’s birthday sleepover because we had a family rule of one sleepover a month, and that was the second that month. She wouldn’t bend, even when we offered to make an exception. Other parents would tell me how lucky I was, that they’d give anything for a kid who didn’t push back or break rules. I agreed. I never stopped to think what that rigidity would feel like for her, once the world stopped having black-and-white rules.
A month after that conference, Lila came home from school slamming the front door, and locked herself in her room for two hours before I could get her to talk. She and her lab partner had gotten a B on their science fair project, and she was inconsolable. She’d followed every line of the 10-page district rulebook, typed her bibliography in the exact 1-inch margin required, labeled every diagram correctly. Her partner had added a last-minute extension to their experiment, testing one extra variable that wasn’t on their original proposal, and Lila had refused to even stand next to the board during judging. By the time she calmed down enough to talk, she said, “If people can just break the rules whenever it’s convenient for them, why do we even have them? It’s not fair that my partner got the same grade as me even after he cheated.”
That’s when I realized my mistake. All those years, when she asked why we had to follow rules, I just said “because that’s how you be respectful, that’s how you keep people safe.” I never talked about the point of rules—they’re not just arbitrary lines in the sand. Most are made for a specific reason, and sometimes they don’t fit every situation, sometimes they’re wrong, and sometimes people change them. I’d reinforced her need to follow every rule every time because it made my life easier. No running through parking lots, no sneaking candy, no arguments. But I never taught her how to think about rules, just how to follow them.
I didn’t sign her up for therapy or plan a big family talk about flexibility. I started small, with two small daily changes that ended up making a big difference. First, I started having 5-minute casual rule conversations when we were in the car driving to dance class or the grocery store, no lectures required. If we drove past the park and saw a group of kids climbing on the closed playground, where the sign said no entry because the sprinklers were being fixed, I’d say “What do you think about that? The rule says no climbing, but the sprinklers are done now, the sign’s just old.” At first, Lila would always say they were wrong to break the rule. But we’d talk through it: what’s the rule for? To keep people from slipping on wet grass. If the grass is dry now, does that reason still hold? After a month of these little chats, she started offering her own takes instead of just repeating “rules are rules.”
The second change I made was intentionally letting her bend low-stakes house rules, with my okay, to give her practice making judgment calls. Our rule was no screens after 9pm on school nights. One night, she was 3 chapters into a short story she was writing for fun, and she asked if she could keep going. Instead of just sticking to the rule, I said “You can have 20 extra minutes. If you sleep through your alarm tomorrow, we’ll go back to the regular rule next week, how does that sound?” At first, she was so uncomfortable she almost turned it down. But after a few of these small exceptions, she got used to the idea that bending a rule doesn’t mean the whole world falls apart. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.
Lila’s a freshman this year, and she still loves structure and rules. Her teachers still say she’s the most reliable kid in class, and she’s the go-to for anyone who needs help remembering what the assignment was. She joined student council’s policy committee this semester, and she’s the one leading the push to change the rule that bans water bottles in classrooms, because the existing rule doesn’t make sense for kids with asthma or who just get thirsty during long periods. She told me last week that most rules are good, but it’s okay to ask if they’re working.
It’s still not perfect. Last month, she didn’t talk to her best friend for three days because her friend skipped study hall to get coffee, and Lila thought that was completely wrong. They worked it out, but Lila still struggles when people she loves break rules that matter to her. We still have those car ride conversations every week, and she still sometimes gets upset when things don’t go by the book.
I don’t think rule-following is a problem to fix, honestly. A lot of the best parts of Lila come from that sense of fairness and order. But I wish I’d known sooner that it’s not enough to just celebrate how good your kid is at following rules. You have to teach them how to think for themselves about them, too. It’s still a work in progress, and some days are harder than others. But these small, daily conversations seem to be helping her find her footing.
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