Behavioral Laws of Children

In science, math or economics, a law is generally defined as something that always holds true and implies a causal relationship.  Some good examples include the law of gravity, or the law of supply and demand.  As a parent of 5, I've discovered several laws governing the behavior of children.  If you have discovered additional laws, please add a comment so I can be enlightened further.

Law 1: Children Gravitate to the Most Recently Cleaned Location in the House

Photo from Last House

Today, I undertook the task of sweeping our entire first floor since we hadn't really had the chance to clean up much--given our house full of Spring Break guests this past week. (Thanks again for coming Eric, Lacey, Alison, Parker, Tyler, and Bennett as well as Sheila, Jessica, Grant, Gavin, Gabrielle, and Garrison!  We loved it!)

Of course, no one was to be found when I was assembling my massive pile of crumbs, dust, dirt, pine needles, and pieces to the game of Risk.  However, as soon as I had finally gotten the pile all together in the kitchen and was getting ready to retrieve the dust pan...every single one of the children came plowing into the pile and tracking it away on their feet bottoms as they "had to"  traverse it on the way to the sink, pantry or living room (as if there were no alternate routes).  I'm still not quite sure how they sensed I was almost done.

I'm pretty sure this is an actually law as I've also observed it in action when they've immediately come to create footprints in carpet I've just vacuumed or to jump on a bed I've just made.

I haven't quite been able to quantify the duration of how long an area remains clean according to this law, but it seems to be proportional to the ages and quantity of the children in question.

Law 2:  Merely Asking a Child to Perform a Task Immediately Exhausts All of His or Her Energy, Completely

Max Wearing Pajama Pants; Not Speedo

For example, at the end of the day today I asked Max to go upstairs and get ready for bed.  Although just moments before he was jumping around on the couch, using it to practice handstands and flips of all kinds, when I asked him to go upstairs he immediately and suddenly crumbled to the floor and said, "I can't move."  He was only able to make the laborious trip up the stairs with significant dragging assistance from me.

Fortunately, he was able to regain some strength once we got to his bedroom, but once I asked him to get dressed for bed, again his strength completely failed him and he fell to the floor again.  "I can't move."

I just need to learn how to harness this power for good, as in when he's running for the street without looking both ways, instead of yelling "Max! Stop!" I'll just yell, "Max, come clean your room right now!"


Law 3:  If There Is A Way To Fight Over It, They Will Find It

Stock Photo of Kaitlyn (Not Reflective of Current Short Haircut)

Every night we read scriptures as a family before bed.  Although we're reading the New Testament now, when we were reading the Book of Mormon, every night we would assemble the various copies we had around the house: Megan's extra large print version, the one from my childhood with pictures drawn in on select verses, or Kaitlyn's old red pocket military-sized copy with about 20% of the pages missing (different than the lost 116 pages).  Because every night there would be a fight about who got to use which scriptures we decided to purchase 5 identical blue hard bound copies so that they would be indistinguishable and we could spend less time fighting about the book and more time reading it and benefiting from it.  What I didn't realize is that they would then fight about who got to pass them out.

I should have learned from our experience with family prayer:  When there was too much fighting about whose turn it was to say the prayer, we typed up a calendar with assignments of who would say the prayer each night.  While that did stop the fight over whose turn it was, the fight then morphed into who got to open the drawer to look at the chart to see whose turn it was to pray, and who got announce it.