Noncompliance Is A Skill

While enrolled in public school, all three of my children struggled with compliance, particularly with the daily minutiae of all the little explicit and implicit demands placed on young children to comply through a seven hour school day.

Middle Kiddo was bored to death by the repetitive and unrelenting nature of the school day and consequently became increasingly non-compliant to express his frustration.  He's also my child that knows unequivocally when he needs a break and is able to self-care at those times, if permitted.  Of course, he was not permitted because it was considered non-compliant.  And so we had a cycle of unmet needs and compliance challenges.  Noncompliance is a self-advocacy skill.

For Big Girl, the pressure to comply felt limiting.  She wanted more choices and more responsibility.  She's found them at her home school program where all students have freedom to decide as long as they are respectful to self and others as well as safe.  She doesn't need a hall pass to step out of class, she and her friends can choose from multiple lunch spots and have been known to carry tables and chairs out to the lawn near a busy street, and the students are actively involved in planning extracurricular events and maintaining the building.  She's in direct communication with her teachers regarding academic work and has, for example, been successful in negotiating alternate assignments, but also in terms of scheduling for things such as late arrivals and days missed.  Noncompliance is a leadership skill.

Little One was most severely affected by the individual compliance deemed necessary to run a classroom with 25 children and a building with roughly 550 students and staff.  As I have often mentioned, she described the school setting as a prison and a chokey.  She did not feel safe and everything about the school day was perceived as a threat.  Under such circumstances, trying to remain compliant for a long day was physically, emotionally, mentally, and behaviorally impossible for her and while it drained her on many levels, including her sense of curiosity and her zest for learning, she did manage to endure it.  Noncompliance is a survival skill.

An old Apple commercial comes to mind when I think of my still often non-compliant children...

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward."