This poor mom. She was juggling two kids on a plane, solo, and she was–as any of us would be–agitated.

I couldn’t help noticing, though, that she was making things harder on herself than necessary.

When we were still half an hour from landing, her little boy started taking off his shoes. “No, don’t take off your shoes! We’re about to get off the plane!” she snapped.

When we landed and everyone stood up, her little boy stepped into the aisle. She barked at him to “stay right here,” standing in front of his seat.

Mom situated her little girl in the aisle with her suitcase, and the girl started talking to the people in the next row. Mom interrupted, with an apologetic laugh: “People don’t want you in their face!”

She created rule after rule for her kids to follow. But did it really matter if the boy wore shoes until it was time to leave? Standing in the crowded aisle after landing, he couldn’t have moved more than a foot in any direction or gotten out of her sight. The people in that next row seemed perfectly happy to talk with her little girl.

The rules weren’t necessary or important. Which is why, when her kids didn’t obey, she didn’t enforce the rules. She just got more and more agitated.

The mom on the plane was almost setting herself and her kids up for a rough time, creating so many situations for her to monitor and so many chances for the kids to fail. It’s much easier to enforce a few rules that are very important to you than to try to enforce twenty rules at once. This is one of the things I talk about in “Follow four rules about rules” in Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science (And What I’ve Learned So Far). Take some time to think about your values as a family, and then set a small handful of rules that follow from those values.

Let the unimportant stuff slide. You might not have a perfectly smooth ride. But you’ll make it much less bumpy for yourself and your kids.

Written by

Tracy Cutchlow

Tracy is the author of the international bestseller Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science, a public speaker, and a creator of places to speak and be heard. Sign up for her newsletter here.