Ever had a kid challenge one of your rules?

Or do you ever feel like your child goes off to school or a play date and returns home seeming to have received some expert technical training on “how to manipulate my parents” from their friends or who knows who else?

Access to information – and being bombarded by marketing messages – abounds, both in our lives and in our children’s lives and it’s more important than ever to have a strategy for your family about what’s really important to you.

One of my co-workers has an interesting strategy that helps diffuse a situation when one of her children comes at her with a request or desire that needs to be dealt with.  When her kids were little she and her husband crafted the Buck Family Constitution.  When someone wants or needs something, they go back to that Constitution to gain a little perspective and a little value about what’s important in their family.

Jenny said, “The kids were really little, maybe two and three, and we were already feeling the pressure of getting and doing more and more all the time.  We would run errands and one of the boys would inevitably fall apart because they wanted a new toy, a candy bar or time at a friend’s house.  So my husband and I spent some time really thinking about what our values are, and what we want to convey to our kids that will help them be more than consumers, but thinking, responsible people.  We wrote the Buck Family Constitution, printed it on some beautiful paper and then we each painted one of our hands and made our mark on that paper.  We framed it and it hangs right over our kitchen table where we have breakfast every morning.  It defines what kind of people we’re striving to be – and when one of us has an issue or a desire it can be a very helpful tool to refer to as we grapple together with something like “do I have to mow the lawn before I play with Kenny?”   We certainly don’t measure up to everything that’s on that Constitution every day, but it’s a good reminder about how we’re trying to live.”

Do you have any interesting principles that work for your family that you’d be willing to share with me?