Rules Are Not Made To Be Broken

The subject of a "rigid adherence to rules" crops up quite often in books and articles written about Asperger Syndrome. Children and youth with AS are portrayed as rigid rule followers becoming extremely upset when peers or adults break the rules of society.

I remember having long conversations with my son when he was around the age of four, about the issue of rules. He became very concerned about rules, asking questions like: "who makes them?", "what gives those people the right to make them?" "who says they can make them?" and finally, "who says that I have to follow them?". Now, keep in mind, I am shortening about six months of conversation into this little paragraph and the bottom line is, he absolutely refused to follow the rules in our home, especially the ones that made no sense. After all, why should he turn out a light in a room that he is leaving when he intends to return there? He may not return for several hours but he intends to so he may as well leave the light on for when he does return.

A power struggle about who had the right to set the rules at our house continued for a very long time until we decided to solve the issue with a family meeting where we all discussed what rules our home should have and which rules we would toss out. By the time my son was around the age of 7, the only thing that bothered him about rules was when my husband or I broke them and he took great delight in admonishing us. I did not realize that he would admonish people outside our family until......

One day this week, my son's teacher announced to the class that she would confiscate any candy that she found them eating during classtime. My son said "You cannot do that, that's called stealing!" Well, you can imagine the verbal battle that ensued ending with my son running out of the classroom in tears. As he reluctantly told us about this confrontation later that day, he became very agitated and angry.

This incident is a typical example of issues that my son struggles with daily. He was taught that it is not acceptable to take things belonging to other people and along comes an adult who does the very thing that is against society's rules and suddenly, it's okay because she is a teacher? To my son, a rule is a rule and everyone should follow the rules. What causes his confusion and subsequent grief are the confrontations with peers, teachers and adults who break the rules for their own benefit or make some children follow the rules, allowing other children to break them.

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