Family Laws

Ashton:
In the car, on our way back to our house from Bear Lake, our mom was telling Isaac to stop playing around with this toy that was making a lot of noise.  So I (Ashton) asked why we have so many rules and so my mom said maybe it does seem like we have a lot of rules (because she's always telling us we can't do different things).  We decided to think of just 5 family laws that we could all remember - and that would include all the little things we're supposed to do or not do.

Eliza:
First we thought of the law of PEACE which means no yelling or fighting or doing things that make things unpeaceful and make us sad.  We decided the consequence for breaking the law of peace should be that you have to go to your room if until you're ready to be peaceful or if you're fighting, you and whoever you're fighting with need to sit on the step until you can work it out and tell your mom or dad what happened and what you did wrong and how you will fix it.  Then you should say sorry and will you forgive me and give a hug.  We already do this consequence and it works pretty well.

The next rule is RESPECT.  You have to care about other people's feelings and their stuff. If you're not respectful you have to fix the problem and say sorry.

Ashton:
Then another law is ASKING.  That means you should always ask before you go somewhere or do something that's sort of special (like a big project like painting or playdough or making cookies).  The consequence for not asking is losing a privilege and not being able to do the thing you wanted to do the next time.  Like when Silas when to the neighbors' house without asking, he lost his privilege of eating brownies that night.

Eliza:
Um, then the next one is ORDER.  Order means that you need to keep your room and the rest of the house nice and neat.  We don't like our house all dirty and messy plus order makes it easier to find stuff.  The consequence for not doing order is that you can't do anything else until you clean up your mess.  We talked about charging other people if we clean up their stuff but we decided we'd just help each other without money.  We have to have our rooms clean before we go to bed at night.

Ashton: 
The last one is OBEDIENCE.  This one's pretty obvious.  If we break this law, we'll do this thing where we "start over" and my mom and dad ask again, extra nice, then we have to answer extra nice and do what they ask or talk about what our idea is about doing it in a minute or something.

I think having just five laws will make it easier to remember them - and if we remember them, we can follow them better.  I think laws are really important - even if they aren't always fun.