Rules rule?
Friday, February 24th, 2012From Friday Mom – Jaime:
Lawyers love rules.
I remember my first day training as a law clerk. My predecessor handed me a copy of the court rules and said, “The best piece of advice I can give you is READ THESE.” Apparently our judge was a very large stickler for the rules, firmly believing – rightly so – that they exist for a reason and life would be SO MUCH EASIER if people just learned to follow the rules.
The day my clerkship really started when I booted up the computer there was a document in the center of the desktop that screamed “READ ME” in big bold letters. The only thing the document said was “We live by the rules, we die by the rules.” (That also happens to be a line from my favorite guilty pleasure movie EVER, The Skulls) But it’s also something that has guided me throughout my career…
Earlier this week, I got one of those emails that tell you about stuff your kid is supposed to be experiencing developmentally at this age. It talked all about how 4 year-olds love rules.
Really?
What 4 year-old likes rules?
Isn’t their job to ignore rules, test boundaries, push the limits?
But then I remember all the times Andrew he smiled up at me and repeated back to me our rules. Even when he first started talking, he had “No coffee til college” down pat. He’ll tell me he knows he has to try something new before he gets to eat mac and cheese. As we walk up the stairs at night, he will tell me, “Okay. So if I change my clothes and brush my teeth and go potty, you’ll come in my room and read me a book, right?”
Andrew may not always follow the rules (particularly that pesky “sleep in your own bed” one), but he certainly knows them. And he wouldn’t be able to do his job of testing the limits if he didn’t know where those boundaries lay.
Who knows, maybe rules are even more important to little kids than they are to us lawyers…
