20 April 2020 - Rules

Rules - Annie Lanier

If we were playing the game Taboo, I feel like everyone would have, “Rules are meant to be broken.” This is subjective from a legal and logical perspective. On that note LAWS are defined as the governing body’s rules that the subjects/citizens are expected to follow. Now, the Laws of Gravity can’t be broken. The rules set out for a board game might be dumb to one person but not another. This idea of unspoken obedience/ability to abide by rules are a gray area. What gets to me the most would be establishing a rule, let’s say a house rule, but using put-down language. Maybe it’s my semesters of childhood psychology and pedagogy but I now can’t stand rules laid out in confrontational manners. When I see rules stating, “NO PEEING ON OUR YARD!” I get tempted to defy the rule and yearn for my dog having a full bladder at that exact moment. When rules are explained in an encouraging, nurturing, informative manner I don’t feel patronized as the reader. “We are trying to keep our garden beautiful, please curb your dog from doing their business here.” I learned a lot from my weeks of observation at a Waldorf school: rules were never allowed to have the word, “no”. This would mean the instructors said, “Please use the correct decision-making skills at this moment”, as opposed to, “No hitting, Dipshit!”