Assent Is Not Optional: Rethinking What We Call “Success” in Behaviour Support

The Moment We Often Miss

You have probably experienced this moment before, even if you have never quite put words to it. I find myself noticing it more and more in practice, particularly in situations that appear to be going well on the surface. You begin an activity with a child and everything looks as it should. They sit down, they engage with the materials and they follow the first steps without hesitation. There is no obvious resistance, nothing that would raise concern, and nothing that would disrupt the flow of the session.

Yet as the interaction continues, something shifts. It is rarely dramatic. Their responses slow, their posture tightens slightly and the natural ease that was present at the beginning begins to fade. They continue to do what is being asked of them, but the quality of their engagement changes in a way that is easy to overlook unless you are actively attending to it. From the outside, the session still appears successful because the task is being completed. From the child’s perspective, something very different is happening. They are no longer participating in a meaningful sense. They are enduring.

I have come to see these moments as critical points of decision. They are often where practice either remains task-focused or becomes truly responsive.

The Central Argument: Compliance Is Not a Reliable Indicator of Learning

Over time, I have become increasingly cautious of how often compliance is used as a proxy for success. In many structured settings, it is the most visible and easily measurable outcome, which makes it appealing. However, the more I reflect on practice, the more I question whether compliance tells us what we think it does.

A child can follow instructions, complete tasks and meet expectations while experiencing significant internal discomfort. When this happens, we may record success, but we risk overlooking the conditions required for meaningful learning. This is where assent becomes essential. Assent is not simply agreement or cooperation. It is the behavioural and emotional expression of willingness, and it reflects whether the child is able to engage in a way that is psychologically and physiologically sustainable.

The distinction matters because learning is not just about exposure to a task, but about the state in which that task is experienced. A child who is regulated and engaged is not just completing the activity, they are available to learn from it. A child who is overwhelmed may still complete the activity, but the learning process itself is compromised.

What the Evidence Suggests About Learning and Regulation

Although assent is not always explicitly named in research, the principle is strongly supported by work in neuroscience and developmental psychology. It is well established that when the nervous system is in a state of threat or heightened stress, cognitive resources are redirected towards coping rather than learning. Attention, memory and problem-solving are all impacted by this shift.

In practice, this creates a significant tension. A child may appear to be learning because they are completing tasks, but if they are doing so in a state of dysregulation, the depth and retention of that learning are likely to be limited. I often think about how easily this can be misinterpreted, particularly in environments that prioritise observable outcomes over internal experience.

This is where assent becomes a more reliable indicator than compliance. It provides insight into whether the child is in a state where learning is actually possible, rather than simply whether they are able to perform in the moment.

Assent as Communication: Verbal and Non-Speaking Children

One of the complexities of working with assent is that it does not present in a uniform way. I have found it particularly helpful to reflect on how differently it can appear depending on the child.

With a verbal child I worked with, assent was expressed in ways that were relatively explicit. They would say “wait” or “not yet”, or they would begin to negotiate around the task. Earlier in my practice, I might have interpreted this as avoidance or resistance. However, over time, it became clear that these were moments where the child was communicating a shift in capacity. When I began to respond to these signals rather than override them, the interaction changed. Allowing a pause or adjusting the demand did not reduce engagement. It improved it. The child became more present, more willing and ultimately more successful in a meaningful sense.

In contrast, I think about a non-speaking child whose communication was far more subtle. There were no words to indicate discomfort, only small changes in behaviour. Their assent was visible in moments of shared attention, relaxed posture and a steady rhythm of engagement. Its withdrawal, however, could be as slight as a turn of the head, a pause that extended beyond its usual length or a change in movement patterns. These were easy to miss, particularly in busy environments, yet they were consistently predictive. When those signals were overlooked, distress followed later. When they were noticed and responded to, the interaction remained regulated.

What becomes clear across both examples is that assent is always present, but it requires interpretation. The responsibility sits with the adult to recognise it, particularly when it is not explicitly stated.

The Cost of Misreading Behaviour

One of the most significant risks in practice is not the absence of skill, but the misinterpretation of behaviour. I have seen many situations where children described as compliant and easy to teach were, on closer observation, showing clear signs of disengagement. Their quietness was interpreted as success, when in reality it reflected a withdrawal of assent.

This has important implications. When disengagement is mistaken for cooperation, demands often increase, reinforcing a pattern in which the child continues to cope until they can no longer do so. The resulting behaviours, which may emerge later in the day, are then treated as separate issues rather than as part of a broader pattern.

I have found it useful to think of this not as unpredictability, but as accumulation. The child has been managing beyond their capacity for too long. When this is understood, behaviour becomes more coherent, and the focus shifts from reacting to incidents to understanding the conditions that produced them.

A Necessary Tension: Assent Versus Expectations

A common counterargument is that prioritising assent risks lowering expectations or allowing avoidance to dictate learning. This concern is understandable, particularly in systems that are structured around measurable outcomes and progress.

However, I have found that this framing presents a false dichotomy. The issue is not whether children should be challenged, but how that challenge is delivered. Ignoring assent may produce short-term compliance, but it often undermines long-term engagement. In contrast, working with assent does not remove challenge. It makes it accessible.

There is a difference between a child refusing because they are unwilling and a child hesitating because they are unable in that moment. Without attending to assent, these two experiences can look identical, leading to responses that are misaligned with the child’s needs. When assent is considered, the response becomes more precise. Challenge is maintained, but it is adjusted in a way that supports engagement rather than undermining it.

What Changes in Practice

When assent becomes central to practice, the changes are not always dramatic, but they are consistent. I have noticed a shift in pacing, with interactions becoming slower and more responsive. Language becomes more intentional, and there is greater attention to how instructions are experienced rather than simply delivered.

Choice also takes on a different role. It is no longer a superficial addition, but a meaningful part of how the interaction is structured. Importantly, this does not result in reduced engagement. In many cases, it leads to the opposite. Children who feel that their experience is being considered are more willing to participate. They do not need to withdraw because the interaction remains within their capacity.

Rethinking What We Measure

The more I reflect on assent, the more it challenges how success is defined. Traditional measures tend to focus on completion and observable behaviour, which can obscure the child’s internal experience. A task completed in distress may still be recorded as success, even though it may have come at a significant cost.

This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question. If a child completes a task but leaves the interaction more dysregulated than when they began, can that really be considered effective practice?

An assent-based approach suggests a different answer. Success is not only about what the child does, but how they experience doing it. Engagement, regulation and emotional safety are not secondary outcomes. They are central.

The Systems That Make Assent Difficult

One of the tensions I continue to come back to is that most practitioners are not working in conditions that make assent easy to prioritise. It is easy to talk about slowing down, noticing subtle changes and adjusting in the moment, but much harder to do this in environments shaped by time pressure, targets and competing demands. In many settings, success is still defined through measurable outcomes, completed tasks and visible progress, which means that compliance is often prioritised, even when this is not explicitly stated.

I have found that this creates a kind of quiet conflict in practice. On one hand, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of emotional safety, regulation and child-centred approaches. On the other, there are expectations around pace, productivity and evidence of progress that can pull practitioners in a different direction. In these contexts, it becomes possible to recognise the absence of assent and still feel unable to respond to it in the way you would want to.

This is where the conversation around assent needs to extend beyond individual practice and into the systems that shape it. If practitioners are expected to deliver outcomes within rigid timeframes, or if success is measured primarily through completion, then the conditions required for assent are often undermined. It is not simply a matter of awareness or skill, but of whether the environment allows for responsiveness.

At the same time, I think it is important to avoid framing this as an all-or-nothing issue. Even within constrained systems, there are moments where small adjustments can make a significant difference. A slight shift in pacing, a pause to allow readiness to emerge, or a willingness to reinterpret behaviour can change the trajectory of an interaction. These moments may seem minor, but they accumulate over time.

What this highlights is that assent is not just an individual responsibility, but a collective one. It requires practitioners, teams and organisations to reflect not only on how they work with children, but on the structures that shape those interactions. Without that broader reflection, there is a risk that assent remains an ideal in theory, rather than a consistent reality in practice.

Why Assent Cannot Be Optional

Over time, I find myself returning to this idea repeatedly, particularly in moments where everything appears to be working. It becomes difficult to ignore how often success is defined by visible outcomes, even when those outcomes do not reflect the child’s experience. Assent is not an additional layer to consider when convenient. It is a necessary lens through which practice must be understood.

It asks us to pay attention to what is less visible, to question what we may have previously accepted as success and to acknowledge that participation without safety is not meaningful participation. It also asks something more of us as practitioners. It requires us to tolerate uncertainty, to adjust in the moment and to prioritise the child’s experience even when it complicates the process.

The more I sit with this, the more it feels that assent is not simply about improving practice, but about redefining what we consider acceptable within it. It challenges us to hold onto a simple but demanding idea, which is that how a child feels while they are learning matters just as much as what they are learning. When that becomes the standard, the way we teach, respond and measure success inevitably begins to change.