Valence electron rules are proposed for the stability and instability of three- and four-membered atomic rings of high-row representative elements in the singlet states. Regular polygons with 4N + 2 and 8N + 6 valence electrons are the ground states of three- and four-membered rings, respectively. The rules are not necessarily applicable out of the range of the number of valence electrons (N-ve): 4m less than or equal to N-ve less than or equal to 6m for the groups 14-16 and 3m + [1 - (-1)(m)]/2 less than or equal to N-ve less than or equal to 6m for the group 13 where m is the number of the ring members.