http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125302688
Here is a very good, concise story about what kinds of rules children understand and have no problem obeying:
1) Moral/Ethical
2) Safety
3) Social Convention
and the type of rules they push back on:
4) Rules that impede on personal choice (friends, clothing, bathing are given examples).
Listeners posted their comments to the story, with most saying that the study is nothing new to parents and was a waste of time doing. On the contrary, most parents could use this kind of advice as raising kids is not as easy as it seems and the teaching of how to be a parent does not always come from your own family.
From my own experiences, I would argue that most modern parents do not even make an issue of this fourth kind of rules by not even making them. Modern parents seem to allow maximum freedom when it comes to personal choice (who they want to hang out, what clothes they want to wear, what cell phone they want to have, what time they want to come home). As a consequence, however, these children are growing up with little consequence when these personal choices cross-over into Moral choices, Safety concerns, and Social Convention. We are starting to hear of more issues of how the freedom of the cell phone and friends is leading to new forms of bullying. Freedom of fashion leads to shunning others for not wearing the “correct” style. We are seeing more and more how Personal Freedom is becoming the Greatest end to parenting and the loss of Morality, Public Safety and Social Niceties.
Personal choices grows one’s one sense of Self and Personality, but parents need to teach their children how to balance it with Morals, Public Safety and Social Norms. The tips from Nucci are a good start to this.