Shared Rules

Shared Rules

I am highly trained in Choice Theory with Dr. William Glasser. This training helped me formulate a written program because by now we had a foster family agency as well as six group homes and a non-public school.
We started out with shared rules. We set rules by age and ability. We had many difficult children, as well as handicapped children – deaf, paraplegic, low IQ, learning disabled, Downs Syndrome but decided with the children that they would all have:
Allowance job – consistent job with pay
Family job – consistent job without pay as well as spontaneous job when asked
Homework – for those in school and learning activity for those with no homework
Evaluation – time with an adult to talk about goals, successes and difficulties
Meals – all eat breakfast and dinner together
We had two types of meetings, family meetings and group meetings.
Family meetings were used to set rules, calendars, needs and family announcements.
Group meetings were used to solve differences, disputes, questions, or clarifications.
The most difficult part for us was consistency on our part. If you set a rule for the children then you have to be responsible to deal with the outcome. If you want consistency out of the children then you have to be consistent.
Meeting with each child each day makes all the difference in the world. When children learn to evaluate their own behavior they no longer feel the need to lie, because everything becomes, “just a problem”, and we are good problem solvers.