Training Up Part III: Learning the Rules

Part One of this series
Part Two of this series

We decided to post all 21 rules in the kitchen and tackle them one at a time with the kids. There is a kit that you can buy to use and train your children, but it appeared to be mainly a coloring book. I am sure it is a great book, but our girls love to draw so we decided we would let them illustrate each rule as we went over it.

*Illustrations: We typed up the rules in a larger font and cut them in strips. The girls glue the rule to a half sheet of plain white paper. Then they illustrate it. It is my hope to laminate these, print bible verses to include, and then bind them in a book for each girl. Then we'll do it all over with the boys in the future and it'll be a great review for all!

We began by reading the entire list of rules to the girls. Then we started by going over rule #1, “We obey God.” Clearly, none of us do this perfectly, so we explained that in our home, the Word of God is the authority. When there are disputes, questions, or decisions to be made, we turn to God. Rule one reminds us that in ALL things for every person in our home, our desire is to obey God. He is the final Authority and it is our desire to obey His Word, resting in His strength to do so.

This is the only rule we didn’t spend a week working on because it encompasses everything that we do. So after introducing and illustrating this rule, we moved on to rule two immediately. T's (age 5) illustration is below:


Rule Two states, “We love, honor, and pray for one another.” We talked with the kids about what this might look like in our home. Then the girls illustrated this rule and we hung their pictures on the fridge. For one week, we purposefully worked on this rule and the girls were able to earn marbles in a jar when they were “caught” obeying the rule. (more on rewards tomorrow)

While working on this rule, we picked the name of a family member out of a basket each morning. We each made sure to pray specifically for that family member during the day. Sometimes the girls prayed by themselves during the day and sometimes we prayed together. At the end of the day, I would ask them if they prayed for the name they had. If they did, they earned two marbles.

Rule number three is "We tell the truth".

This rule was easy enough for the girls to understand, but a bit harder to reward. Most of us immediately think of situations where it is hard to tell the truth. Clearly, by looking at K's illustration you can see that is what came to her mind as well.


These tempations to lie don't come up regularly throughout a day (thankfully), so I wasn't sure how to reward this. I decided to tackle this one with a bit of creativity to encourage the girls to think about being truthful at all times. During the day I would ask them questions randomly:

Are you wearing red?
What did you have for breakfast?
Is that piece of paper blue?

Of course these questions were pretty easy ones to answer honestly. But after the girls answered, I would tell them, "When you are honest with the little things, then mommy and daddy can trust you in the big things." Then I would give them a marble in their jar.

We are just finishing up week 4, "We put one another's interests ahead of our own." It has been fun this week catching them looking out for someone else. Tonight at a birthday party, T (age 5), reported to me a way that she looked out for another person at the party. It was sweet to hear her being conscious of her own behavior. (and yes, I gave her a marble for it)

More on the rewards next post...