‘Grit’ is the new buzz word to define that quality that gives people the edge in life – that strength and courage to push through tough times, to bounce back from adversity and to thrive. Grit comes from a determination to ‘do the hard thing’ and ‘do the right thing’. Those two ‘do’s will set anyone on the right path to health, happiness and prosperity. So how do you get this grit into your kids life? There are many ways and one of them is through rules.
My free-spirited inner-hippy is a little offended by the fact that rules work so well. Anarchy might be more fun (and I should know) but with it comes opportunities for genuine danger. In an ordered home with rules, not only are they safer, they feel safer as well. Children with looser rules around them feel less cared for. Good rules protect kids from each other, too. Rules about how to treat each other provide useful buffers when brotherly (and sisterly) love runs thin.
Rules can be difficult to instil and tedious to enforce, but see them as temporary scaffolding while something wonderful is being erected: your child’s character. The rules provide the template for his or her morals: eventually they won’t want to hurt others, damage things or neglect their duties as the rules have become not just habits but guiding inner principles. But this only happens when our rules are reasonable, well understood and enforced fairly; niggling nit-picking rules-for-the-sake-of-rules might just have the exact opposite effect.
And on top of all this, rules give grit – they hold kids on the track of doing chores, working hard, doing the right thing, until they become habits that will serve them for a life time.
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