All rules can be violated

Everyone knows that certain rules, principles and methods are inevitably associated with the role of a parent. Something pertains to the field of everyday traditions and it is known by default that almost all of them are universal: you can not feed children with unbalanced food, you can not let them go to bed late, you can not let them sit too long in front of the TV, you can not allow them to cuss whilestill small.

The right parents also know that there are practically no rules that could not be violated for any valid reason. For example, you know that children should receive quality healthy food preferably five times a day, but if you are completely exhausted at work and barely crawled home, then the end of the world will not come, even if this time you ask the children to have dinner with fish sticks.

The main thing is to think carefully about what the worst consequences of violation of this or that rule can be. If you break the safety rule in the car and do not fasten your seat belts, the consequences can be the most terrible, so it's best not to violate this rule. But if you miss one evening bathing, because on that day you were tired more than usual, - so what's so terrible about this can happen?

Do not forget that this section of the book is about preserving common sense. And the meaning of this rule is that it is more important for your children to have normal, quiet parents than never to eat a harmful fish stick in your life. There are parents who literally climb out of the skin, trying always and everywhere to follow absolutely all conceivable rules. And if you accidentally miss some little thing, they tear their hair and are terribly upset.

Once we decided to go for a walk with my two children for a whole day. The youngest then was only a few weeks old, and his eldest daughter two years. The first part of the route we had to overcome on the train;and so, getting out of the car at the station, we suddenly found that the daughter managed to leave the house barefoot. Of course, we knew the unwritten rule that a child should not ride a train without shoes. Before us there was a choice: to return home and to refuse a trip or to spit and go as is. Naturally, for the daughter the question was not at all: she confidently headed for the train barefoot, as if there was nothing unusual about this.

But after that a new choice arose: how to behave further. We could start lamenting and worrying about what we could not change anyway, and ruin the whole day for ourselves and our daughter;but could just have a wonderful time. And to me and to you it is clear that it is absolutely pointless to exhaust yourself with empty experiences. In our and other similar cases, it is completely permissible to violate any rule, and I would even say it is necessary( although it is worth acknowledging that it would be undesirable to violate the rule of evening bathing on the same day).