Why do families bicker?
Well, to answer that question, you’ll have to ask 10,000 more queries. Why can’t siblings share a cookie equally? Why does Grandma insist she knows better about the internet than we do? Should the TV really be on during dinner? Who’s washing the dishes this time? Are the second cousins not allowed to come over anymore because of the tree house collapse incident? Who took my headphones?!
The list goes on and on…
In a nutshell, families spend far too much time together to get along amicably all the time. Households juggle more than just soccer schedules, school plays, science projects, and work conferences. There is a constant balancing act of the personalities, as siblings learn to get along, parents work together to solve problems, and grandparents fall asleep on the couch with the family dog. While there are many opportunities for disruption in a delicate household ecosystem, there are also a myriad of ways that family rules can provide the unavoidable structure everyone craves.
To avoid building animosity between one another, relatives and live-in family members can follow a simple set of instructions, ‘rules’ if you will, that help everyone play nice. Following the laws of playground society, family rules can keep players under a strict code of conduct and encourage sportsmanlike behavior, even when sisters are at each other’s throats, cousins are causing chaos, and the neighbor’s dog jumped the fence again.
While we would never want to remove ALL of the chaos from our calamitous families, because it’s the cracks in the perfection that make every family unit unique, sometimes it’s nice to know that everyone will at least adhere to common decency. Ultimately, at the end of every day, while you may not always agree with your family members, they’re still family, and that’s the glue that binds together every wholesome household.
Genetically or chosen, a family will always end up by your side, especially if you can follow a few simple rules as a reminder of your underlying love.
