Author’s practical guidance
Their house, your rules — how far it goes
Source named in the book: RIE (Gerber) · coparenting research (Feinberg)
Children handle different rules in different places without much difficulty.
Say this now
“Your house, your routine. These two things travel with us.”
Name exactly two. A list of ten will be ignored entirely.
(to the child) "Different houses, different rules. Ours start again at home."
Said as an ordinary fact, not as a complaint about anybody.
Do this
- Divide the rules into travels-with-us and stays-at-home, in advance and out loud.
- Put safety, allergies and sleep in the first group. Almost everything else in the second.
- Let their house be theirs, including the parts you dislike.
- Reset at home quietly. Expect one difficult evening after a good visit.
- Say what worked, not only what did not.
Avoid this
- Sending a written list of rules for a two-hour visit.
- Policing from the sofa — correcting every deviation in real time.
- Abandoning safety rules because you are a guest.
If it repeats
A hard evening after every visit is normal, and it is not evidence that the visit was wrong. Shorten the visit before you shorten the list of rules.
Why the book suggests this
Children handle different rules in different places without much difficulty. They learn early that daycare, home and Grandma's each run on their own physics, and they do not experience this as inconsistency the way adults fear they will.
What they cannot handle is a rule that changes depending on who is arguing. The line is not between houses. It is between the things that are yours to decide anywhere and the things that belong to whoever is in charge of the room.
From this collection
Same Words: Every Grown-Up
45 prepared situations in this family area.