Refrigerator Rules
As soon as you have a child reach the age of about THREE, please feel free to cut and paste, ENLARGE and Print—and then FRAME—on the Refrigerator Door:
RESPECTFUL
RESPONSIBLE
AND
NICE TO BE AROUND
When your child reaches about the age of five, you may add:
RESOURCEFUL
_______________________________________________________
I posted a longer version on Sept 18, 2011. Here are some excerpts from that post:
Children watch and learn. Children experience and learn. Children practice and learn. So, very calmly I will repeat: Please refer to the Refrigerator Rules (the 4-R’s) for instilling Integrity and Truthfulness into a child’s framework of relationship with self and others:
Respect
Responsible
Reciprocal
and
Resourceful
A child understands quite early about being respectful, responsible and being nice/Reciprocal. As they age, they become adept at solving their own problems, if we let them, encourage them, promote their resourceful capabilities.
As role models, always on Shakespeare’s Stage–we also need to adhere to the Refrigerator Rules. Young eyes are watching. Young hearts are feeling. Young spirits are learning.
The building of our child’s character seems to be a combination of role modeling, expectation and experiential—practiced every day with the joyfulness of living a life with honor. Perhaps the measuring of “Successful” can be the ability to achieve an honorable life. I hope so. For all of us.
Posted on April 14, 2011 by dearfriends
Nice post! Thanks.
Thanks for stopping by and the kind words. I swung by your site and offered Dave Ziegler’s Jasper Mountain website: http://www.jaspermountain.org/index.htm This will hopefully give you some answers/help/guidance in your fostering of your nephew. Let me how this goes for you. Blessings, Barb
I love these. In a few months my little boy will be emerging from the terrible twos and I will be putting these on my fridge.
Hello Roaring Sweetly,
Thank you for visiting and finding the simplicity of Refrigerator Rules. I would also recommend that you begin to investigate “Love and Logic” concepts. When children are taught how to solve their own problems from an early age, they do not typically chose poor choices and behaviors as they get older. Oh, and yes, from “terrible twos” we developmentally often go on to the “trying three’s.” Take a deep breath and be joyous—Barb