In some countries children have very strict rules of behavior, in other countries they are allowed to do almost anything they like. To what extent should children have to follow rules?

Whether adults should impose strict rules to children or let children explore everything independently is a difficult choice because there are no clear guidances that help parents to select one of these choices. In Indonesia for example, children must obey more rules than adults. Meanwhile, on the other part of this world children have more freedom to do things that they like. To some extent, I agree that additional rules for children is necessary for their safety and their personality. But too many rules can prohibit children to grow to be brave and creative adults.

First of all, as children are so naive that they are easy to be manipulated by adults, parents apply strict rules that prevent children from crimes done by adults. For example, children may not play outside the house without adult’s supervision. It is probably the rule that children hate, but it is necessary to avoid them from kidnapping. Secondly, rules are usually made by parents to help their children to develop a respectful personality. In this context, rules can be seen as practices that children must respect to have superior characters. For instance, people tend to appreciate individuals who are polite, thus parents usually urge their children to say, “thank you”, everytime their children receive a gift as an exercise to be polite adults.

However, too many rules do not always yield positive results as presented above. Adults who lose their courage to change their society’s perspective and develop “out of the box” ideas are usually the product of very strict rules of behavior. This may happen because when they are young, they do not have room to express their ideas and develop their critical thinking as their parents or adults around them do not allow them to do irregular things and even they are punished instead of appreciated for the “out of rule” behavior.

To sum up, although I believe that rules associated with safety and character buildings are important for children, parents must apply the rules with cautious as children critical thinking development might be the price that they have to pay.