My Daughter Was Missing Recess. Then We Asked Her Why.

When one of my daughters was in kindergarten, her teacher was concerned because she kept missing recess.

The rule in her classroom was simple. Students had to finish their work before they could go outside and play.

My daughter wasn't finishing in time.

So she was missing recess. Regularly.

I understood why her teacher was worried. Kindergarteners need to play. They need to move around, spend time with other kids, and have a break from sitting at a desk.

They also need to learn to finish their work.

Neither of those expectations seemed unreasonable.

But something wasn't working, and from the outside, it looked like a pretty straightforward problem.

My daughter was taking too long.

So the obvious question was how to get her to finish faster.

Then, we asked her what she thought was happening.

She explained that the other kids finished because they didn't do good work. She wanted to do good work.

Well.

What do you do with that?

Tell your five-year-old to do worse work so she can go to recess?

And yes, I realize she was five. I'm not suggesting she was qualified to judge the quality of everyone else's schoolwork.

But what she told us mattered.

The adults were concerned about how long she was taking and the recess she was missing.

She was concerned about doing her work well.

We were looking at the same situation and seeing different problems.

And until we asked her, we had no idea.

What We Could See and What We Couldn't

I think about that experience when I consider how quickly we can form an explanation for why a child is struggling.

A student isn't finishing assignments. They need to work faster.

A child isn't participating in class. They need to pay more attention.

A student knows the material but performs poorly on tests. They need to study harder.

Sometimes those explanations are right. Kids do need to learn how to manage their time, finish assignments, pay attention, and work through things that aren't particularly interesting.

But how do we know which problem we're trying to solve?

In my daughter's case, the unfinished work was easy to see. So was the missed recess. Her teacher was paying attention and recognized that something wasn't right.

What we couldn't see was how my daughter understood the assignment and what she believed she was supposed to accomplish.

Once we heard her explanation, there were other questions worth considering.

Did she understand what finished work was supposed to look like? Was she spending too much time trying to make everything perfect? Did she need help learning when something was good enough to turn in?

And why did finishing that particular assignment have to determine whether she got to play?

I don't know that there was one perfect answer.

She still needed to learn to finish her work. And she needed recess.

But now we had more information to work with.

I've spent a lot of time working with neurodivergent children and families, and one thing I've learned is that the behavior we can observe doesn't always tell us what we think it does.

Taking longer doesn't necessarily mean a child understands less. I learned that firsthand when I started homeschooling my daughters. What worked well for one could be completely wrong for the other.

Not completing an assignment doesn't automatically mean a child isn't trying.

And finishing quickly doesn't necessarily tell us how much a student learned.

Schools have to measure things. Teachers need ways to understand student progress, identify difficulties, and decide when additional support is necessary.

Grades, tests, assignments, and classroom observations all provide information.

But there's a difference between observing what a child is doing and understanding why they're doing it.

A child who takes a long time to write might be struggling to organize their thoughts. Another might be having difficulty with the physical act of writing. Another might be so concerned about getting the answer right that they keep starting over.

The finished assignment, or lack of one, may look remarkably similar.

What those children need could be very different.

And yes, sometimes the child needs instruction, practice, or help developing a skill.

As a Barton tutor, I've seen firsthand what targeted, structured instruction can do for children with dyslexia. Some difficulties require specialized support. We shouldn't dismiss those needs because we're questioning the expectations around the child.

But we also shouldn't assume that every difficulty can be explained by what's happening inside the child.

Sometimes the method, environment, expectation, or measurement deserves a closer look.

And one of the people who can help us understand that is the child.

What Happens When We Ask the Child?

I want to be careful here because I don't think children always know why something is difficult.

Sometimes they don't have the language to explain it. Sometimes their interpretation is incomplete or mistaken.

My kindergartener's opinion of her classmates' work was probably not the most objective assessment.

But her explanation gave us something we didn't have before.

We learned what she thought was important.

And that changed the conversation.

I think we sometimes underestimate how much information children can give us, even when they're very young.

What part of this is hard?
What happens when you try to do it?
Is there something that makes it easier?
What do you wish your teacher understood?
What do you think would help?

Those questions won't always produce a useful answer immediately. We might need to observe more, talk with teachers, gather other information, or try different approaches.

And some of the things we try won't work.

I've certainly been there.

But at least we're including the person who is experiencing the difficulty instead of making every decision based on what we see from the outside.

There's another reason I think these conversations matter.

We're helping children learn to understand themselves.

A young child might notice that they can explain something out loud but have a hard time writing it down.

An older student might recognize that they understand the material but struggle when they have to complete a test within a certain time.

A teenager might begin to understand which tools, environments, or teaching approaches help them learn.

That kind of self-awareness takes time to develop.

And it matters.

Because eventually, these children grow up.

They go to college, enter the workforce, build relationships, and find themselves in situations where something isn't working the way they expected.

I want them to have experience recognizing what they need and explaining it to someone else.

I don't want a child to spend eighteen years having every adult around them identify their difficulties, make decisions, and explain what support they need, only to be expected to advocate for themselves the moment they leave high school.

Self-advocacy doesn't suddenly begin when someone needs to request an accommodation in college.

It starts much earlier.

It starts when we ask children what they notice, listen to their answers, and help them understand what works for them.

Of course, the responsibility changes as they get older. A five-year-old isn't going to have the same understanding or decision-making ability as a sixteen-year-old.

And parents and teachers still have responsibilities. Sometimes we need to make a decision a child doesn't like. Sometimes they need to practice something difficult because it's an important skill.

Listening to children doesn't mean they get to decide everything.

It means their experience is part of the information we use to make those decisions.

I think that's especially important for neurodivergent kids, who may spend a lot of their school years hearing about the things they aren't doing quickly enough, consistently enough, or the way everyone expects.

If every conversation starts with what they're doing wrong, how do they learn to recognize what they're doing well?

How do they learn to distinguish between something they need to practice and something that might work better with a different approach?

How do they learn to ask for help without feeling that needing help means they've failed?

Those are things we can start working on long before adulthood.

And we can start with ordinary situations, like a child who isn't finishing an assignment.

I know parents don't always have much control over the classroom. Teachers have full schedules, limited resources, and many students whose needs they are trying to meet.

Sometimes there isn't an easy solution, even when everyone involved wants to help.

But asking the child what they're experiencing doesn't require us to have all the answers.

It gives us another piece of information.

I still think about my daughter's kindergarten situation.

Her teacher saw a child who was missing recess because she wasn't finishing her work.

We saw a problem that needed to be solved.

And my daughter saw herself as someone who was taking the time to do a good job.

We might have spent all our energy trying to make her work faster without ever realizing that she thought she was doing exactly what we'd asked her to do.

We wouldn't have known if we hadn't asked.