Why Children Follow Rules

Legal socialization is the process by which children and adolescents acquire their law related values, attitudes, and reasoning capacities. Such values and attitudes, in particular legitimacy, underlie the ability and willingness to consent to laws and defer to legal authorities that make legitimacy based legal systems possible. By age eighteen a person's orientation toward law is largely established, yet legal scholarship has largely ignored this process in favor of studying adults and their relationship to the law. Why Children Follow Rules focuses upon legal socialization outlining what is known about the process across three related, but distinct, contexts: the family, the school, and the juvenile justice system. Throughout, Tom Tyler and Rick Trinkner emphasize the degree to which individuals develop their orientations toward law and legal authority upon values connected to responsibility and obligation as opposed to fear of punishment. They argue that authorities can act in ways that internalize legal values and promote supportive attitudes. In particular, consensual legal authority is linked to three issues: how authorities make decisions, how they treat people, and whether they recognize the boundaries of their authority. When individuals experience authority that is fair, respectful, and aware of the limits of power, they are more likely to consent and follow directives. Despite clear evidence showing the benefits of consensual authority, strong pressures and popular support for the exercise of authority based on dominance and force persist in America's families, schools, and within the juvenile justice system. As the currently low levels of public trust and confidence in the police, the courts, and the law undermine the effectiveness of our legal system, Tom Tyler and Rick Trinkner point to alternative way to foster the popular legitimacy of the law in an era of mistrust.

A child who can’t follow rules is a child who’s always in trouble. This book starts with simple reasons why we have rules: to help us stay safe, learn, be fair, and get along. Then it presents just four basic rules: “Listen,” “Best Work,” “Hands and Body to Myself,” and “Please and Thank You.” The focus throughout is on the positive sense of pride that comes with learning to follow rules. Includes questions and activities adults can use to reinforce the ideas and skills being taught.

Eva feels that rules are getting in the way of her fun at school. Will she discover that classrooms have rules for a reason?

The rules keep getting in the way of Noodle's fun. Rules for this, rules for that. There are so many rules! Can Noodle be convinced that rules are meant to help, not harm him?

Cassandra LOVES school so much she never, ever wants to leave! Cassandra does not want to go home from school. She stays after the nice teacher leaves. She stays while the janitor with a tattoo mops the floors. She stays after the slightly scary principal turns off all the lights and goes home. She plays with the clay and reads until after dark, when her mom and dad realize she is missing and come in a panic to take her home. The next day, Cassandra gets up, eats breakfast, gets on her bike and heads off to school -- but it is Saturday and all the doors and windows are locked. So on her way back home she stops by the store and places an order. The next day she looks out the window to find her purchase has been delivered -- there is a brand-new red-brick school with a nice teacher, a slightly scary principal, and a janitor with tattoos in her very own backyard, so she can have school any time she likes! This story was written for Cassandra, a girl from Pickering, Ontario who said that the most interesting thing about her was that she LOVED school!

'Why Children Follow Rules' focuses on the process by which children and adolescents develop their orientation toward the law. Drawing on law, psychology, sociology and criminology, Tom Tyler and Rick Trinkner review the literature on socialization with a particular focus on families, schools, and the juvenile justice to reveal a fundamental conflict about how authority and power should be exercised in essential social institutions. They argue for the merits of consensual authority as a way to foster the popular legitimacy of the law at a time when public trust in the police, courts, and the law has reached unsettling lows.

"Text first published in 1990 by Children's Press, Inc."

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.