This post is the first of a series of posts about the Prentice Family Human Creation and Development Group’s Policies and Procedures Manual, or what most families likely call "the rules". As my kids started getting older, I thought there might be some benefit to writing down a few of the most important rules their mother and I like to throw at them. There turned out to be many benefits and this series will highlight a few. If you can't wait for more posts in this series, become a premium member to view a live Google Doc of my full Policies and Procedures manual (currently 9 articles, 61 clauses, updated often)!

Table of Contents

Theory
Methodology
Preliminary Results

Theory

As all parents know, in certain cases 😉 it can be difficult to incentivize children to perform the behaviours that parents find to be highly desirable activities. On the flip side, trying to prevent certain actions from occurring in one’s household can also lead to issues. We’ve all tried simple, less-nerdy techniques like sticker charts, yelling, allowances, taking away electronic devices for certain periods, grounding, and more with mixed success. Experience over the years with many of these led me to decide to create a complex construct of one or more of these techniques. My intention was to attempt to more closely model the intricate incentives in broader society (which are often not as simple as “go to your room”). One of the differences I wanted to embrace with this was to try for a little bit more transparency, consistency and equity. I figured if I actually started writing down the rules and making them available to my kids, it would eventually get to a point where I would be far more consistent in my enforcement and they would be (hopefully?) more likely to follow them. My interest in this may have been partially due to the fact that part of my day job involves drafting, editing and negotiating legal agreements. Although, even if you don’t regularly draft legal agreements, I really suggest you give it a try!

Methodology

I started with ...