How Do I Know If My Parental Rules Are Actually Working?
Rain spattered the window of the coffee shop by the playground, and Lila pushed a crumpled, coffee-stained sheet of notebook paper across the table toward me. Her 12-year-old son Jax was at a friend’s house across town, we’d grabbed 45 minutes of quiet while our kids were occupied, and she leaned forward, voice tight: “Can you tell me if my parental rules are good? I have no idea if I’m being too hard or too soft these days.”
I unfolded the paper. It was neat, bullet points, written in her loopy script: 1 hour screen time maximum on school nights, 2 hours on weekends. No phones in bedrooms after 9pm. Homework done before any screens. Chores: take out trash twice a week, feed the golden retriever every morning, pack your own lunch on Saturdays. No swearing at home. Always say please and thank you to adults. I counted, 8 rules total. She’d crossed out one that said “No candy before breakfast” and written a question mark next to the no phone rule.
“Last week I found Jax’s phone under his pillow at 10:30,” she said. “I took it away for three days, and he didn’t speak to me for two of them. I laid awake that whole night wondering if the rule was stupid, or if I’m just a bad mom for making it a big deal. Since I split with his dad, everything feels off, like I’m making up the rules as I go and I’m bound to mess it up.”
I folded the paper back up and pushed it toward her, and thought about the rule I swore by when my oldest was 12. No snacks before dinner. I wrote that rule down in my own little mom notebook back then, I thought it was non-negotiable. My mom had done it, all the parenting articles I read back then said it was how you raise healthy eaters. Every single night, my kid would come home from soccer practice, starving, beg for a granola bar, I’d say no, he’d mope, I’d get mad, by the time we sat down to eat we were both already annoyed. One night I was so tired from working late I just didn’t have it in me. I said “Fine, eat a banana. But if you’re too full for dinner, that’s on you.” He ate the banana, and then ate two full helpings of pasta anyway. I realized that rule wasn’t for him. It was for me, because I thought that’s what good parents did. It didn’t solve any actual problem we had.
That’s the first question I ask myself now when I’m wondering if a rule is any good: what actual problem is this solving? If you can’t name a problem that’s happening right now for your kid or your family, it’s probably just a rule you think you should have. Let’s go through your list, I said to Lila. No phones after 9pm: what problem is that solving? She said Jax is always tired in the morning, he’s falling asleep in homeroom, the doctor said he needs 10 hours of sleep, and he’s been scrolling TikTok until 11 most nights when he has his phone. Okay, that’s a real problem. The rule exists for a reason that matters to both of you.
What about the homework before screens rule? She said I just thought that’s how you do it, right? Get the hard stuff out of the way. But Jax comes home bouncing off the walls, he can’t sit still for 45 minutes of homework right away. He forgets half his assignments anyway, we fight about it every single day. Oh, so the rule isn’t solving the problem of getting homework done—it’s creating a whole new problem. That’s when you adjust it, I said. Jax has ADHD, he needs 15 minutes to blow off steam or zone out after sitting at school all day before he can focus. What if you swap it: 20 minutes of screen time when he gets home to decompress, then homework. That’s not being lenient, that’s changing the rule to fit your kid, not some generic idea of how a family should work. I have a friend who insists her kids play outside for an hour every day, that works great for her two outdoor-obsessed boys. My middle kid has social anxiety and hates being hot and buggy, that rule would be a daily fight for no reason. Rules don’t have to work for every family, just yours.
The third check I use is simple: can you enforce it without fighting every single day? If you’re nagging five times a day, or screaming every weekend, the rule isn’t good, no matter what any expert says. For the no phone after 9pm rule, instead of checking his pillow every night, why don’t you put a cheap charging station on the kitchen counter? Tell everyone charges their phones there overnight, including yours. You don’t have to police it, the setup does the work for you.
A month later, Lila texted me an update. She moved the charging station, swapped the homework order, and left the no candy before breakfast rule crossed off for good—Jax likes a small piece of chocolate with his oatmeal and it doesn’t hurt anyone. She said fights are down by at least two-thirds. Jax still forgets to feed the dog sometimes, and she still takes his phone away for a day when he sneaks it to his room, but it’s not a days-long standoff anymore.
Last week I sat on her back porch drinking iced tea, while Jax threw a tennis ball for the dog across the yard. He walked back in, mud on his sneakers, and asked if he could have his best friend over tomorrow after soccer practice. Lila wiped a drop of sweat off her forehead and said “Only if you finish your history project tonight before bed, okay?” He groaned, said “Fine, mom,” and turned right back around to go throw the ball again. No slamming doors, no silent treatment, no big scene.
Lila looked at me and shrugged. “It’s not perfect,” she said. “Some days I let him have extra screen time when I have to finish a work call, and I still feel guilty about it. But it’s better than it was.”
I think about that a lot. People are always looking for a list of good parental rules, the ones that experts say are the right ones. But a good rule isn’t something that looks good on a piece of paper. It’s something that makes your life and your kid’s life easier, not harder. Some rules are for the kid, some are for you—my rule is no shoes on the couch, that’s my rule, because I don’t want dirt on the cushions, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make me a bad mom that it’s for me. There’s no final answer, no perfect set of rules that works forever. Next year Jax will be 13, he’ll want more freedom, and Lila will change half the rules anyway. The question doesn’t have to be “are my rules good?” It just has to be “is this working for us right now?” Most of the time, that’s enough.
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