Collaboration Over Compliance: A CPS Approach to Autonomy

In parenting, teaching, and caregiving, we often talk about strategies—tools to help children focus, manage emotions, or meet expectations. But too often, these strategies are used with a hidden agenda: to get a child to comply, to behave, or to make life easier for the adult. When that is the case, we need to be honest with ourselves. These are not truly strategies for support. They are tools for control.

When a strategy is used primarily to meet the adult’s needs, whether that is peace, order, or quiet, and does not take into account the child’s perspective or readiness, it becomes something we do to a child rather than with them. And when we operate from that place, we are not supporting growth. We are reinforcing power and authority at the expense of connection. We are prioritizing our comfort over the child's autonomy.

It is easy to confuse compliance with regulation. It is easy to call something supportive when it results in the behavior we wanted. But if that behavior came at the cost of a child masking their needs, ignoring their discomfort, or pushing down their emotions just to make us comfortable, then we have not supported them. We have taught them that our needs matter more than theirs.

Adults are under tremendous pressure to manage classrooms, maintain routines, and meet external expectations. That pressure is real. But when we use strategies designed to achieve quick compliance, we risk silencing the very voices we say we are supporting. We risk framing our need for order and efficiency as the child's responsibility to maintain.

When we push our own agenda, we have to ask ourselves: at what cost? Whose needs are being met? Whose needs are being ignored?

We must shift to relationship-based support. Support that respects autonomy, values each person’s voice, and protects dignity. Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) help shift us from doing something to a child toward doing something with them. This approach is not about fixing behavior. It is about solving problems together. It is about understanding what is getting in the way and finding a solution that works for both the child and the adult.

When we offer support to someone instead of managing them, we build trust. We create space for emotional insight. We model respect. And we foster a deeper kind of regulation that comes from safety, not control.

So the next time you reach for a strategy, take a moment to reflect: Is this about meeting my need for control, or supporting their need to be understood? Is this about making things easier for me, or helping us move through this together?

Because if autonomy is lost in the process, then it is not really support at all.