The word of the day is "compliance."

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How much "consistency" in compliance do your kids' schools require and what are the results that you have seen?

Due to my son's anger issues relating to compliance, they are now insisting that he comply with everything 100%. So for example, today my son already got into trouble because they have him doing OT suggested motor lab exercises that are supposed to make his day go better. He did not want to do 1/3 of a particular exercise that supposedly he picked out when they instituted this a few weeks back, and that he likes; they insisted and he became violent.

Would it really have been so terrible if they just said, "OK," and moved on to the next exercise. I understand that they want to teach that he has to do what he is told, but is requiring this of an obviously stressed out kid helpful, necessary, damaging, what?

I really do understand that they don't want to reward him by giving him his way, but I really do think this could make things even worse. How much compliance is enough?

Thoughts?

I haven't seen much one way or another-- being blessed so far in that respect-- but I can give you my opinion.

I think that 100% compliance with an expectation is unrealistic for anyone.

No one would dare demand that of a neurotypical adult; if they did, they'd be considered unrealistically demanding ("difficult" or "a jerk" or "one of those people there's just no getting along with") or an abuser.

I don't think a realistic person would demand that of an NT child, either.

Therefore it's not right to demand it of an ASD child. Stupidly low expectations are ableism and everyone knows that. So is having higher (or stricter) expectations.

I can dig that it's frustrating for them, that they want compliance, they want troublesome behaviors to stop, they want it tomorrow (yesterday would be better).

Sometimes I'd say that it's necessary all the same-- those are usually the stressed-out days when I am thinking I need to treat myself and my kids that way. We might look snappy, but we're not happy and not functioning well on those days. Even if we get things done to the extent of bouncing a quarter on the bed and pressing the lapels, there is inevitably a serious backlash in terms of angry resentful kids and a barely functional mommy within a few days (the days we spend driving around in the car or having no structure and nothing get done while I surf the Internet or call people trying to work out some plan all day).

Sometimes I'd say it's destructive-- because it leads to meltdowns, shutdowns, and assorted other downs (not to mention extra down time for recovery). The closet may look great the day I snap, go completely psycho, and clean it out with garbage bags and Goodwill boxes-- but we spend weeks hunting for stuff that got tucked away in the flurry, trying to figure out what happened to it, consoling children over favorite toys that Mommy chucked, hunting around to replace items that were actually needed.

How much compliance is enough for a "normal" person?? Ask this question of a few sane adults-- or of a few loonies down at the school. Ask them how much they feel they need to comply with others' expectations to feel that they have done a good job of being prosocial for the day.

Final thought-- Jennifer McIlwe Myers has a few things to say about compliance. Read her-- she's really wonderful. I love her. Basically, it breaks down to this-- teaching autistic kids to strive for 100% compliance is the common road, the "easy" road if one can ever use the word "easy" in relation to teaching a spectrum kid to cope. But it has some really serious backlash, both in terms of loss of self-respect and self-confidence (still more of a problem for me than AS itself, at least in the opinion of the fools who love me) and in terms of dealing with unrealistic demands and peer pressure later in life.

I know my grandmother taught me (and I taught myself) compliance. I stayed out of trouble in school because I always complied-- in fact sometimes I annoyed people by over-complying. I also complied with peer pressure-- demands that I drink, smoke, use a lot of pot, let some 15-year-old jerkboy stick his hands down my pants during class, deny deny deny my own limits and emotions and needs.

100% compliance, my therapist says, set me up for the no-win life I'm in now-- I can either accept that I won't be able to comply 100% with anyone, or I can resign myself to a very narrow life of 100% compliance with a very small handful of select individuals (and all the cognitive dissonance that goes along with complying even when I know it's the wrong thing to do).

100% compliance almost cost me my life, put my family in serious jeopardy, made a bad situation worse and longer-lasting than it had to be, and cost my middle two kids a lot of attention and interaction and opportunities during a very critical window. We are still cleaning that up; I do not know for sure but I do believe if I had had a little better developed "fuck-you bone," DS5 especially would not be facing some of the struggles he has now.

No-- I don't think 100% compliance is a good or reasonable goal.

It is, however, a common one. How ready are you to keep a cool head and a conversational tone of voice while you fight an entrenched system like a wildcat????

Last edited by BuyerBeware on 01 May 2013, 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

3 words (directed at school staff, not you): Pick your battles.

I think it's foolish to try to force 100% compliance over issues that have little or nothing to do with anybody's well-being or safety. Making a big deal out of every little thing is going to cause unecessary problems. I don't personally believe that getting into power struggles with children just to enforce dominance is really the way to go.

I think it's a terrible idea to make OT activities into an intense power struggle, because OT can be essential to helping a child feel and function better (I get this from "make his day go better") -- my thought is that you could risk having the kid develop a negative association with the OT itself, and if that negative association gets bad enough, the activity might stop being effective because the emotional memories tied to everything about it could send the kid's nervous system into an overloaded state as soon as the activity is even suggested -- it's very hard to learn effectively in that state, whether you're learning how to better co-ordinate motor movements or how to do math.

Other thought, and then I swear I will cut off my hyperverbal perseverations and go mop my floors.

The 100% compliance attitude and the resentment it engenders is probably behind a lot of the posts I end up making here that people think are truly sick and f**ked-up.

And people are probably right. I wish I had the ability to really, firmly, truly agree with them.

A reasonable paradigm for compliance would probably help a lot with that.

Sigh.

They instituted the motor lab which they say is helping, although I can not see how they know that, as it was instituted after his behavior started getting bad, and it is getting progressively worse.

I think their point is that he is being non-compliant to test them. He may very well be doing that because he has had a social awakening and he may be testing them in a social science experiment kind of way to see how far he can take them and what they will do. I acknowledge that this is a very likely possibility. I am just very unsure that rigidly pushing back too prove they are in control is the right answer. I wish I could get the "Explosive Child" stuff to work to show them they are wrong, but my son does not have the communication skills to make it work, and if he won't tell me anything, he sure won't tell them.

I agree so much with you BuyerBeware, I was thinking these same very things this morning. I think it is unsafe to teach a rigid child with no "common sense" or social judgement to comply with everything. I am sure they would poop a brick, but I do not teach that. When I wrote his social story on compliance I specifically put in there that if someone tells him to do something dangerous, hurtful, stupid or unsafe that he is to say "no." It absolutely is the easiest thing for THEM and it puts him in danger. I trust his current teacher not to put him in danger, (She is good and I trust her) but there is no telling who he could be contact with (including other kids as well as adults) that could tell him to do something wrong.

Part of what he needs to learn is when to comply and when not to. He does not have the capability to judge that, now, and I do not want to keep him from developing that judgement.

That said, he does need to get it together at school, and comply with things that are not issues. I just am wondering what approach they should be taking and do not trust the path they are currently on.

Clearly, this school is trying to manipulate you into something. I'm not sure what - but 100% compliance for a special needs child is idiotic, and cannot possibly be legal - do they require 100% compliance of NT kids? They aren't allowed to make up rules just for special needs kids that the other kids don't have to follow.

Maybe it's time for a lawyer.

I don't know what I am going to do, but I find this infuriating. I doubt the FBA is going to come in in time to fix anything this year, so I am just going to have to base my decision on what we do based on how they plan on handling him.

Edited to add: Before the experts were called into this mess they eased up on him a lot(maybe too much?) and his behavior still escalated. I just do not trust these people to figure out what is going on with him.

2 out of 3 is GOOD, not bad. 100% compliance is NOT evidence-based protocol. All of our IEP goals are written such that a goal is considered to be achieved when a ratio of something like 8/10 attempts are successful. Whoever is working with your child is having a conflict of wills with him and that person needs to step back or be replaced by someone who can remain objective. I suspect that to whatever degree he is purposefully being stubborn, it is due to a personality conflict with the adult in the situation and that adult is taking his refusals WAY too personally. Their idea that "You are going to do what is good for you whether you like it or not!" is just stupid.

As far as the Explosive Child stuff, don't give up on that! We often never get past the first step of me asking him "What's up with that?" but after repeated attempts, I have been successful in getting him to tell me some of the stuff that is going on with him (in approximately 2 out of 5 trials and I count that as success ). When he does tell me something though it is usually pretty eye-opening for me!

My thoughts are that they are being ridiculous. It's not humanly possible for a child to comply with everything and your son has special needs. Talk about over-egging the pudding! They are likely to send him the other way by trying to make things too rigid and impossible to stick to. As he is your child, you should have input into the process. Also, unless they are enforcing such a rule with all his classmates then this is discrimination. It's setting him up for a fall no matter what he does.

Since it sounds like it is a power struggle issue, where your son is testing boundaries, maybe a compromise is in order. I can see both sides (to some extent). 100% compliance is completely unrealistic, but giving in a lot can cause problems too as my son, at least, was quick to learn when he could push to get out of undesirable activities. Would it work to give your son some choices...for example, maybe 2 "passes" a day? These would be 2 times he could choose not to finish an activity (or if he is resisting and it was not an active choice, they could still take a pass and give in). That would give him some control over his environment. However, when the 2 passes were gone for the day, then he would need to comply (thereby maintaining their authority). That type of system would work for my son, but I know all of our little kiddos are different.

They have to be flexible. I was never diagnosed (grew up in the 1960s) but I had good and bad years in school - and I can tell you from personal experience that they have already done enough damage that even with excellent teachers it's going to take at least months to get your son back to where he was before they did harm.

Heck, just being forced to eat healthy foods as a kid has rendered me somewhere between permanently unable to, and forced to go through contortions in order to, eat anything remotely like those foods. Basically, most vegetables are a struggle for me to eat, now that I want to be able to eat them. (And from other things I've tried that I wouldn't eat before - but wasn't forced to eat - I'm pretty sure I would have been able to eat most things if I hadn't been forced. (Because the fact I can eat green things at all, even though they have to be raw, absurdly fresh, and mixed with something else, tells me that's not a sensory issue. Now, squash and all its relatives are a different matter. I always loathed them, and still do.) That's what force can do to someone on the spectrum; leave them with lifelong scars.

I had a teacher in second grade who assumed the way to "straighten me out" was to treat me as if I were in reform school. Third grade wasn't quite as bad - but the principal was second grade teacher's best friend, so it wasn't too great, either. Fourth grade, I actually had amazingly good, intelligent, adaptable teachers who steered me in a better direction - but it still took me four to five years to partially recover from the damage of second grade. Yes, I said partially recover. Try to force me to do any sort of "make-work" (any task that is unnecessary) even if it "only" takes five minutes, and I will boil with rage and humiliation. I can still literally get so angry I run a temperature just by recalling the time about three years ago I had to fill out a simple, less than half a page form. Why did that anger me so much? They already had all the data on that form; all they needed was a reference to the original record, a document number. That's what they're going to make out of your son.

Now, on philosophical grounds, I don't believe it is just to require someone to spend even five minutes doing something unnecessary - but I am also sane enough to understand there are times they're going to do that no matter what I think, and to wish it wasn't such a struggle or source of ongoing frustration. But more than forty years ago, I was taught (unintentionally) to despise anything of the sort unconditionally and irrationally. It is a lesson I still have not been able to unlearn. And, again, I'm grown up and would prefer to be able to unlearn it. Their "experts" are morons, who have no idea what it is like inside our heads. Should they succeed in forcing your son to subdue his anger to such an extent they get their way, sooner or later it will explode in one way or another.

ASDmommy, I still don't understand the rationale behind why your son isn't allowed to reduce 2/4 to 1/2. I don't understand this woman's thoughts on this. Why isn't your son allowed to pursue objective truth? The reduced form 1/2 is the correct answer. Why does this educator have her panties in a wad? This seems like Orwellian doublethink. Your son is being subjected to Orwellian doublethink. I am a highly irritated now. This is such idiocy and buffoonery.

My thought is that they are being ridiculous to the point of abuse. That they do not want to deal with you and your son in anything even resembling an appropriate education, and that you could probably build a good legal case against them based on their treatment of him this year. Also, that they will continue to escalate in their mistreatment in an attempt to force you out of their hair. People need to fight against schools treating kids the way they've treated him this year. However, even though that is true, and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, I also can't see this not damaging him long term like The Wanderer and Buyer Beware have said. So my thought is that while the school is utterly, probably illegally, wrong here, I wouldn't stick it out.

He only has a very short time as a kid, and lawyers and courts can be very slow. I've always wondered what happened to those kids who ended up being involved in Supreme Court cases. They were important, and their cases have helped others, but how many years did it cost them? Call me a bad person, but I am too selfish of my own kids' time as kids to go through something like that.

It's terrible that the OT's are being involved in mistreating your son. When we pulled out to homeschool, we had a great relationship with the OT's and since our state allows for homeschoolers to receive treatment through the district, we still saw the same OT on the school's dime until he tested out for a year.

CubeDemon, probably the reason it does not make sense to you, is the same reason it does not make sense to me. She feels like his non-compliance is exacerbated by the fact that he gets to do a lot of things how he wants to do them. So instead of gradually weaning him off the non-compliance that is most problematic, the educational diagnostician wants to get him in the habit of being compliant with everything no matter how trivial. This is not a goal in his IEP, this her just deciding this is the problem. His goal is something like 80%, which he wasn't even close to when things were going well.

She does not like that he does his math at an older than grade level, and wants him to conform to what everyone else does b/c in her mind if he gets away with one thing, he will generalize that he can get his way about everything. They view him as getting a power trip from it. This is stupid. Assuming he got any work done this week, I will look to see if the teacher has been forced to follow this junk about the math or not.

He really does not understand power trips, for one thing. In any event this is not a power trip thing so much as him needing to do it the right way. In her mind the right way is what they expect not what is more precise so she views it as invalid. She also thinks he needs to "earn" the privilege of doing advanced math. Again, she is an idiot.

I am not saying he is compliant in other things that do matter. I acknowledge that, but I really do think it is because they dropped the ball when his teacher was out on sick leave. He has no business being violent. I understand that, too, obviously. However I think it is because the minute he gets in that building he feels too much stress from all the changes they have foisted on him. Not an excuse, but it is a reason.

I have been forced by circumstance to tell him to just follow their rules even if he thinks they are stupid, or at least not to hit or kick when they try to enforce them. I told him if he feels the need, he should protest verbally, only. I think his brain is too short circuited to be able to follow this, but this is what I told him. Once he hits or kicks they have a legal right to restrain him, and this is what I am trying to stop, right now.

MiahClone, I agree. We pretty much all but decided to pull him out after this year b/c I don't have a curriculum ready for the last part of this year. I have been working on one for the next grade, but I have done nothing for this year. I am hoping to get him calm and at least not physical so we can survive the rest of the year, without me pulling him out just yet. I am so angry., and I have to make sure I contain the damage. I feel bad even waiting until the end. I hardly have the stomach for that. As much as I would love to stick it to them, they have the fact that he is violent, now, on their side, and I doubt a judge here is going to agree that they caused the violence through instability and incompetence. I should have asked for an FBA, when this first started happening, but then again the educational diagnostician would have just started mixing in, sooner. Unless things magically turn around, I cannot see waiting for an FBA. They have done enough damage as it is.

Three weeks left in the year? Or do they go longer where you are at?

Just to be sure, though I know this is probably one of those things that is like, well duh, tell me what I already know why don't you? You have checked the rules for homeschooling in your state, right? The state I am in is, I think, pretty lax. Once a year in the fall (or upon pulling the child during the year) the parent has to fill in a form that takes two pages, but is only about 10 fill in the blanks, and sign a paper saying I can't sue them for not providing my kids with an education while I am homeschooling them. This can be mailed in after the first time. Then in the spring from 3-9 grades (unless a dr. signs a waiver) they have to take an extremely truncated version of the standardized testing.

The law specifically says that the state department of education has to administer homeschoolers a standardized test once a year. It doesn't specify which one. The DOE in the state is pretty much of the mind to let homeschoolers mind their own business, so they administer two subtests of the IOWA, which I think was replaced as the main test nationwide about 15+ years ago. Even with all the breaks and such it takes two hours for the testing. The results are sent directly from the company to the parents. The state never even sees the results. They are required to administer a test once a year, and they do that. There are options to go private with the testing, also.

Anyway, that is the requirements in my state. No reporting to any overseers, no required record keeping, none of that nonsense where they are in your face all the time. A lot of states have even fewer requirements than my state. There are a few to watch out for, though. Particularly Pennsylvania and California. Hopefully you are in a good one for homeschoolers. You guys need a break!

We go longer, unfortunately, but on the plus side all we have to do is file paperwork, and promise to follow the home-school, mandated curriculum subjects and that is it. I don't think (but I will check) that we have to file anything annually, just when we withdraw. It is the one thing our state is good about.

Of course what we will do will be more than what is mandated, but I don't have to deal with any annual tests as a home-schooler. That does not mean they don't have other avenues for making trouble, but I think they want us out even if they do lose state and federal funds.