Rules

This week we talked about "unspoken rules" within our families. I was amused when I compiled my list of rules from my childhood, as well as rules that have developed in my new family. My favorite rule growing up (favorite to remember anyways, at the time it was the worst) concerned control of the T.V. Basically the rule was that if you left the room while watching T.V. you would have to forfeit the remote to whoever entered the room before you got back. Usually this meant beat-downs between my younger brother and I. He liked Dragon Ball Z, I liked....well anything but that. I remember times when he would hide just outside of the room, waiting for me to leave for a drink or something, and then come zipping in right as I left. Ohhhh it made me so mad.

A rule we have between my husband and I deals with who has to drive the car when we are together. If we are going on a long drive, he usually drives there and I have to drive home. It's funny that we never really talked about making that an official rule, but almost always that is what is assumed. The same goes with shorted trips, if he drives to Horkleys I get to drive home. Somehow we always know whos turn it is.

I think that having unspoken rules is important because it gives structure to different subsystems, but it can also be bad because they might be understood differently by those involved. We must make sure our unspoken rules dont cause problems to anyone, in order to help families run more smoothly.