Setting Limits: Follow the “Rule of Nine”

Few families today have nine children (although apparently having fourteen is back in fashion), but I sometimes evoke what I call the “Rule of Nine” when families are having trouble setting limits on their children. Imagine you have nine children. Would you allow all of them to get away with everything your child does, even the behaviors that you don’t particularly like, but can’t seem to stop?

I have often observed that children from large families seem to be more flexible and roll with the punches better than children from small families of one or two. First children notoriously provide the biggest challenge initially because parents are just learning to parent. Obviously one cannot generalize too much about whether child one is more difficult than child two, three, or four, but I have seen certain patterns emerge over and over again, particularly when it comes to teaching your baby good sleep habits.

Why is it that the first child is usually the one that ends up sleeping in the parents’ bed? Well, one or both parents may have trouble setting limits on rescue operations for those middle of the night cries for help. By the age of five months or so, if not before, most babies are able to sleep in their own crib in another room for at least six-hour stretches, unless there are extenuating medical issues. But time and again, well-baby visits with me are taken up with a discussion about sleep problems.

Often, parents say that their baby wakes up in the middle of the night and won’t stop crying until he is picked up. Because this happens again and again, and parents are exhausted at the wee hours, the baby ends up getting placed between the parents in their bed. Before long, the baby becomes a toddler, then a child. And guess what? The child is still wedged between the parents.

I have even had a parent confess that she curled into a little ball to sleep in the crib with the baby to get him back to sleep. There are many fans of the “family bed” and I am not debating the pros and cons of that arrangement here. What I’m talking about is parents who would prefer to have the baby sleep in his crib, but can’t seem to make it happen. What is interesting is that when child number two comes along, these issues do not tend to occur. The reason is that the parents are a little more experienced and now understand the consequences of these midnight rescues. Plus, they are even more tired in the middle of the night and perhaps more willing to set limits early on.

This is where the “Rule of Nine” comes in. When parents come to me in distress that nobody is getting a good night’s sleep due to these middle- of-the-night musical beds and other shenanigans, I ask them to pretend they have eight other children. You couldn’t possibly deal with getting up multiple times during the night for all nine kids. What experienced parents do is set limits consistently. Bedtime is bedtime and that is that.

You can apply the “Rule of Nine” to many other parenting situations. For example, would you really prepare a special dish of a toddler’s favorite “white foods only” diet if you had a family of eleven to cook for? No. You would serve the food, and those who want to eat would eat.

It is not that I am promoting tough love to these little people, but rather believe that setting limits lovingly for a child early on, when appropriate, is better for the whole family in the long term. Imagine how frightening it is for a child to feel he is in charge of the household at such a young age!

How do you like my “Rule of Nine” psychology? Too tough?

Dr. Victoria McEvoy graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1975 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at HMS. She is the Medical Director and Chief of Pediatrics at Mass General West Medical Group. She has practiced pediatrics for almost thirty years. She has been married to Earl for thirty six years and raised four children. She currently enjoys writing, traveling, reading, almost all sports, and spending time with her two grandsons.

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