Lately, Lily’s head is a thousand places elsewhere. She is carrying on conversation after conversation with herself and her many enchanted associates. She does well making lists, for which she checks through them as her day progresses. She draws maps, and provides us outline instruction sets of step by step how we are to accomplish something she has in mind.
She does not, however, have any interest in following another set of instructions from anywhere than her head. She also has little interest or attention for requests or processes which require multiple steps for completion. She’s too occupied and has to get back to doing “her thing”. 🙂
When I have had the opportunity to listen in to an average first or second grade classroom, I have heard over and over the adult heralding the value of “listening”, “following instructions”, and “repeat”. For the repetition exercises, the adult either states something that the children repeat in unison, or the adult states something and the children answer back. It’s a form of mental conditioning as well as crowd control. It annoys me. Lily thinks it’s demeaning, apparently, as the last time we saw it in action (at a jump rope club), she refused to repeat or answer back in spite of every other kid in the room following the course of expectation. And when asked about her reason for refusing, she simply stated that it made her feel dumb, so no thanks.
While I am privately pleased that she doesn’t seem to have a need for approval gained by appeasing or conforming, and I realize that this demonstration is one that is indicative of a solid sense of self, it is also a subject that I feel needs be approached lightly. It is one thing to stand one’s ground when it matters, and it is another to simply not choose to conform and follow, but it is still another when some form of cooperation is necessary for social harmony. Lily doesn’t have a sense of these different aspects and realms or layers just yet. It makes for challenging interplay in large groups, where conformation and compliance en groupe, is actually necessary for reasons beyond an overbearing leader’s expectations.
The other aspect of this same dynamic is one that I started to discuss above but got sidetracked.. The part where the typical 1st/2nd grade classroom is constantly reminding children to listen and to follow instructions. Some people would assume this is necessary and done as a result of children of this development level (having reached all of 6-7 years of maturation). These assumptions follow the thinking that children of this age do not yet possess the ability to listen with attention without being reminded, and do not yet possess the skill set and inner discipline to be able to follow a set of instructions, in order or otherwise, without being reminded and told over and over to do so. In my opinion, this approach is indicative of a belief set that young children around this age (because it is less heard in the earlier classrooms, likely because the adults do not yet have the expectation that the kids should be able to accomplish the task) are insufficient and require our assistance to develop this trait we want them to have at this age.
I would rather see an environment that considers how well children, just a year or two earlier, were eager to have a short set of plans or instructions to follow, and that perhaps rather than an inadequacy in development suddenly, the kids in the 6-7 year realm are simply at a different point and focus set. Lily certainly is. Can she follow instructions? Yes. Is she interested? That entirely depends on what the instructions are for, and from whom they came. Can she follow her own list and set that she devises and designs? Absolutely.
So, I think it’s less about an ability, and more about what the child at this stage views as important, and when we do not modify their natural state of development by demanding our timeline be adhered to, instead of theirs, then we don’t have a kid who is falling short. Instead, we have children that are functioning exactly as their minds’ need them to, at that point in their development, for optimum growth. Granted, taking this approach requires us to set aside our expectations, or modify them… I think I can do that. I can also simply gently smile at how funny it is sometimes to see how Lily processes and retains multiple steps necessary to complete a task.