Children who are sticklers for rules

[letsgomaths]

Does anyone have such a child, and do you try to teach them "there are times when you can/should break rules"? I expect a few of them are making their presence felt at this time, with comments such as "they're not social distancing", or "I'm not allowed in the supermarket!".

I was a great stickler for rules; I was also very good at memorising and quoting them. I was always telling my parents off for crossing at the red man, saying "bloody", pointing out the "no cycling" signs in the park where my dad used to take me cycling. I did it a lot at primary school as well, became the class snitch, and predictably, made myself unpopular. I probably grew out of it as a teenager, or learned when to keep my mouth shut, but I never enjoyed breaking rules. I remember also being shocked to learn (aged 19) that if a party invitation said 2pm, you were supposed to arrive late; everything I'd learned in childhood about punctuality was suddenly turned upside down.

I think my parents humoured me when I did this, but I'm not sure if they ever actually explained that in life, sometimes you have to decide when to break rules; and that constantly referring to rules makes one a person nobody wants to be around.

Has anyone had to actively persuade their young rule-sticklers to loosen up a bit, for their own good, and to teach them when rules should be kept (e.g. game rules), and when they're intended more as guidelines?

I haven't talked to her about needing to break the rules herself, I like that's she's so obedient at the moment! I think she'll probably learn from experience that a little rule break is ok or just grow out of following the rules.

But I do repeatedly tell her to mind her own business as far as other people's rule breaking goes. She is such a snitch! And very bossy with it. I do worry that she might struggle to keep friends when she's older.

She's 4.

DD is 4 and a big fan of rules. She was the one loudly saying in the street 'but we can't do that BECAUSE OF THE VIRUS!'. We discuss when not to get involved. As she is young it often focuses on telling the teacher rather than telling someone off herself. This will need to change as she gets older. We are also trying to model flexibility and breaking rules in a small way.

Could never convince DS to lie about his age to get on the mini cars at Legoland. DD on the other hand.....

My DD - 13 - timed one of our few lockdown walks to check we turned back at 30 mins and make sure we got home within the hour. She was so stressed! On balance it works hugely in our favour for parenting as she's so well behaved. I do encourage her to break the rules sometimes and she's getting better at understanding when things can be bent a little.

Poor dd had a friend like this, was forever chastising her! Telling she shouldn't be doing this or that!

My 12 year old is like this, gets hugely stressed about people breaking the rules! Had to explain to her that commenting on her friends social media accounts chastising them for not being 2 meters apart was probably unwise if she wants to remain friends with them!

DS1 was like this, his reception teahce rtalked to.me about his wonderful sense of right and wrong making him very cross indeed.

I didn't teach him that the are times he should break the rules, I taught him that life's not fair, sometimes other people will break rules but he could be the better person. He's 19yo now and the most easy going yet resilient young person I know.

My teens! Keep lecturing my DM when she makes excuses about why she or they should bend lockdown rules.

My 6 year old is like this. She is extremely kind, thoughtful and considerate of others and she feels all her feelings very, very strongly. I think most of the time this is what makes her upset when others break the rules - it feels like an injustice to her.

Having said all that, she mainly cares about ‘big’ or moral rules - for example neighbours having BBQs in their garden for extended family made her upset because she can’t hug her grandparents. However, she is very happy to push it with something that she doesn’t see as an important rule and will happily try to justify her own rule breaking. She’s a funny little thing

@TheDuckSaysMoo And the "one-hour exercise" rule was never even there. @WowLucky Your comment about "sense of right and wrong making him very cross indeed" rings very true - I was like that. At primary school, I was once so angry about the injustice of the whole year group being made to miss playtime, that I stood up and voiced my displeasure loudly (aged 9). There was a stunned silence, and a teacher took me aside to calm me down as I was shaking with tearful fury - she didn't let anyone off though.

Knowing when to break rules is one of those adult skills that can seem baffling to literal-minded children, especially when they see the people who are normally rule-enforcers do it (teachers and parents). Another thing I didn't understand was haggling: why would anybody pay less than the asking price? I thought that the haggling scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian was just Python silliness, I didn't believe people really did it when buying cars and houses, or even things in shops!

DS1 (9) is, but he has ASD. One of the things that went into my notes for his referral at the GP is his tendency to tell teenagers off in playgrounds

I try hard to teach him about shades of grey e.g. breaking the speed limit doing 31 in a 30 is a different impact to doing 50.

I was that child. I cringe at the memory of some of the obnoxious things I said to people. I remember being at a friends house and her dad dropped the ‘h’ when he said my name, eg ‘olly instead on Holly, and I said, “actually, it’s Holly’ with a big emphasis on the H. He must have thought I was a pretentious little twat!

I’ve always been very anxious and struggle with anxiety to this day. As a teacher I see anxious, rule-obsessed control freak children and it’s like looking at myself. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it and it’s far preferable to being too far the other way but I do worry (ironically!) about anxiety and try to encourage them to relax a little.

I had to run after my eldest a couple of weeks ago as he was about to go and tell the teenagers on the park off for being where they shouldn’t and being too close. I like that he sticks to the rules most of the time but it’s the enforcing them on others that we need to work on......

Thankfully he’s grown out if commenting loudly on other people breaking the rules, “LOOK MUMMY, THAT MAN DIDNT SAY THANKYOU TO THE BUS DRIVER, THATS REALLY NAUGHTY ISNT IT MUMMY.....MUMMY........MUMMY”

I've got one who is a stickler for rules and I have had conversations with her about not telling the teacher about every infraction. Her teachers seem to be ok about it, but I'd find it annoying. It doesn't seem to have impacted her friendships, though she does have well behaved friends.

My other one doesn't give a toss about rules. I'm not sure she's deliberately breaking them, as much as absent mindedly feeling compelled to break them. I don't think she will tell on others as much as her sister as she just doesn't pay as much attention to what is going on around her.

My 5 year old is like this. She watches the road signs and tells my DH off if he goes over the speed limit. I’d like her to be able to relax a bit more. At school pre lockdown she would get upset if other children were sitting in her spot on the carpet (they are told to try and sit in the same place each day). I know she gets it from me and I sometimes struggle to relax about minor things like our neighbours breaking lock down rules.

Road signs - the Highway Code was my bedtime reading, I learned all the signs by heart really quickly. My poor parents - if they ever replied with "you'll understand when you get older", that always made me angry, as did any reply which ended with "when you get older".

My brother was anxious too, although not as rule-obsessed. In our house, he instituted the "worry box", and highly structured family meetings were held to discuss what was inside, with everyone taking turns to speak. Only he put worries in, though.

Ironically, having had a childhood of being told to be quiet about other people breaking rules, I found it difficult when I started a job of umpiring. I saw the rule-breaks all right, but it took me a while to be confident enough to blow the whistle and call them.

A friend of mine has a child like this. They had a couple of years where they didn't go out much as the child would end up having panic attacks about their younger sibling being naughty and rule breaking. Said younger child was a toddler.
My two, however, need the rules regularly shouted at them. We've had to revoke most of ds1's computer privileges this week. He's nine and knows the rules of internet safety, but was lying about who he was playing with and then attempted to hack into DH's windows account. Lucky for us he's bad at hacking.

My dd age 7 is like this, along with the anxiety. She's autistic which is linked as its the black and white way of seeing things. Either something is allowed or it isn't, it's very hard for her to understand the grey area or situations where something that is technically against the rules, might be OK or even the right thing to do.

Sometimes her anxiety can be overwhelming, she can get very worked up about "safety" too. So the two together sometimes make family trips out or even walks during lockdown hard. I don't mean we are reckless, but for eg of we let our dog off the lead when we are vaguely near a road (that's hard to explain, we'd never do it where dog could actually get to road), she gets stressed it we don't wait for ds (10) even though he within sight, we're only a few metres ahead, if he runs off to play and goes even a bit out of sight in an enclosed playground she gets really upset and starts screaming his name. On a walk recently dh and ds went slightly off the public footpath to look at something- she spent 10 mins worrying they would be arrested.

Last week I was trying to teach her my favourite "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" and explain why sometimes it's OK to break rules, sometimes it's a good thing (civil disobedience) but she just thinks I'm some sort of hell raiser.

I worry about how much anxiety she lives with every day.

My 5yo dd is like this. Nursery thought she was fab as she seemed so mature with good morals and knew right from wrong. Her reception teacher wants her to deal with problems herself rather then telling an adult all the time but its hard as some of the time there are things teachers should be dealing with from the onset like hitting and bullying

As a teacher, children who dob in those who aren’t following the rules are more annoying than the ones who bend/break them. Yes, I know fine well tommy has pushed in the line but the person he has pushed in front of isn’t bothered. But now Katie at the front has pointed it out, I will have to deal with it. And now we are all later out to playtime than we would have if we’d just ignored Tommy’s infraction. I hope you’re satisfied Katie. (She will be, some children love seeing others told off.)

Actually, this is a developmental stage children go through aged about 3/4, so I can tolerate it with very young children, just about. By the time they’re in juniors, snitching is just annoying.