Compliance, Respect, and Other Things I Think About While Someone Crawls Under a Table

I care a lot about respect in my classroom. I want kids to feel safe, known, and like they belong exactly as they are.

I also regularly say things like: “Please stop crawling under the table.” “Chairs are for sitting.” “We are not licking the carpet.”

So there’s a tension.

Because sometimes what I’m asking for looks a lot like compliance. Bodies still. Voices off. Eyes on me. And sometimes yes, that is the goal. We have 22 first graders and one adult. Sometimes we just need to move.

But here is where it gets tricky. A lot of what looks like disrespect in young kids is not. It is impulse. It is movement. It is “my body forgot the rule the second you said it.” And if I treat that like intentional disrespect, I end up in a power struggle I did not actually want.

So I am trying to hold both. I teach expectations. We practice stopping, listening, keeping hands to ourselves. And I am not always explaining everything in the moment. Sometimes there is not time to build buy in. We just need to move. But I am trying not to slide into compliance for the sake of compliance.

And I will be honest. I am still working on how to do that and still have a classroom that feels calm and functional. Those are the moments that feel the worst, when I get pulled into power struggles. That is when everything gets tight. Joyless. Difficult.

Recently someone gave me two pieces of advice for chatty kids during learning time: join their conversation and spin it into the lesson, or be more interesting. Which is humbling, and occasionally true. It was a bit of a breath of fresh air. A shift away from points, prizes, and consequences, all the things that start to pile up when compliance becomes the goal.

Because sometimes the more we push for compliance, the less we get it, especially with kids who are already having a hard time. Push harder and what you get back is not better behavior. It is escalation. Not because they are choosing disrespect, but because they are overwhelmed.

And if we keep responding the same way, we miss what’s actually happening.

That does not mean we drop expectations. But it does mean I am paying more attention to how I am holding them.

Because sometimes what looks like “won’t”… is really “can’t yet.”

And getting that wrong changes everything.