Rule Kids

This week, a couple of girls from our homeschool coop had been talking about going to a park after classes. M asked me if we could join them. She asked the girls, very politely, if she could join them. Then, we followed a van around a less-familiar part of town to the park. There are several sections to this park. There is a pool that we did not use, a big, open room with wheeled toys and a giant bouncer, and a climbing area. The biggest drama was around rules. We used to joke that M could be left with her buddy G all day with only 3 rules and they would never break one of them and be perfectly safe without supervision. Of course, we never did that, but you get the idea. I also took G with us to an indoor park, where he read all the rules aloud (in Kindergarten) and was distraught when kids we'd never met before weren't following all of them. I finally calmed him down by explaining that there were other adults that were responsible for those kids, and that it would be inappropriate for me to interfere with those children. He relented, then accidentally ran (no running allowed, of course), apologized and continued to walk quickly . . . luckily, I was out of earshot as I laughed! The first drama this week was watching the kids read every one of the rules, make sure they qualified to use whatever they were currently reading about, then letting loose. There was some concern about where to leave shoes, etc. It reached a head when there was some girl drama, which starts alarmingly young, over M trying to say that she didn't want to go in an area because her younger and taller friend was too tall to go in there. What she meant was that she wanted to play with B, so she was leaving that area. B heard that M didn't want to play with her because she was breaking rules. Ah, the laughter with rule kids. After the mothers figured out what was really being said, M apologized for the miscommunication and the three girls were in loud fits of happiness once again. Do you have a rule kid? What's your favorite evidence of it? It left me smiling for hours that all three of these girls from different families all had that trait. I wonder if it's a personality component that drew them to each other, or if it's some other correlation . . . any theories?