1. The Rule of Belonging: Ensure children grow up in a healthy family environment;
2. The Rule of Hope: Always let children see hope;
3. The Rule of Strength: Never compete with your children;
4. The Rule of Management: Before children reach adulthood, it is the parents' responsibility to discipline them;
5. The Rule of Voice: Although children may not have decision-making power at home, their voices must be heard;
6. The Rule of Example: The influence of leading by example is immense;
7. The Rule of Agreeing to Disagree: Respect children's perspectives on the world and try to understand them;
8. The Rule of Punishment: This rule easily leads to rebellion and resentment in children; use with caution!
9. The Rule of Consequences: Let children understand the potential consequences of their actions in the real world;
10. The Rule of Structure: Teach children to understand the boundaries of morality and law from an early age;
11. The “20-Yard” Rule: Cultivate children's sense of independence by maintaining a distance of at least 20 yards from them;
12. The “Four Ws” Rule: In any situation, know who your child is with, where they are, what they are doing, and when they will return home.
From these 12 fundamental rules, we can see that American family education is almost unrelated to reading, studying, grades, or school advancement; instead, it focuses on “character building” and the cultivation of morality and self-cultivation.
This inevitably reminds us of family education in China. In our country, some family education has become a continuation or extension of school education. Parents devote almost all their thoughts, energy, and financial resources to tutoring their children and improving their grades. As for how to be an honest and hardworking person, or how to achieve self-care and self-reliance, these are often “pushed to the sidelines.” Consequently, we see that some children excel only in their studies while being “unqualified” in other aspects; some children even exhibit extreme selfishness, arrogance, a lack of love, and tendencies toward moral deficiency.
We hope that we can draw inspiration from this and move out of the current misconceptions in family education.
