The Cost of Compliance for Our Kids

0:28If you're a parent, you know this moment. love thinking about this word defiance. And look, as a parent of three, I know these moments. They are so inconvenient. They are so exhausting. And I think a lot of us also think, I would have never done this when I was a kid. I was terrified of my parents. I really felt this pressure to be good. You're going to love this conversation and it's going to turn on its head so many of the things that we tend to accept as true. I'm talking today with Dr. Sunita Sa. She's a professor at Cornell and she wrote the book Defy, the power of no in a world that demands yes.

1:07Together, we rethink defiance and compliance and we give you some totally new tips that you're gonna find really helpful in your everyday life. I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this.

1:34Hi, Sunita. Hi, Becky. It's wonderful to be here. So happy to have you. And honestly, it's just so rare that someone I'm talking to has written a book about the word, essentially, that I think I'm asked about most from parents. Right. Oh, my kid is so defiant. I have such a defiant kid. Why is my kid having this need to defy me all the times? And so I'm just so excited to take so much of what you wrote here. And I know it's not just about the parenting world, but there's so much overlap in how you think about defiance. And so tell me, let's just start with the title, Defy. You wrote a whole book about this and you really redefine what it means to or give us a new framework.

2:19So let's jump in there. Sure, absolutely. Well, I mean, I've been so fascinated by what that single powerful word defy means for like so long. And it was really because of the way that I grew up, which might sort of account for why I went into research into this in this particular area. And like I was raised to be good. In fact, my father, when I was little, he told me that my name, Sunita, means good in Sanskrit. So I mainly lived up to that. I did what I was told. I went to school. I did all my homework. I did what was expected of me. I even had my hair cut the way my parents wanted me to. I was good.

3:02And these were the messages that I received, not just from parents, but from teachers, the community. What does good mean? It means doing as you're told, listening to other people, pleasing other people, being polite, obedience. And so I really started to equate being obedient and compliant with being good and defiance with being bad. And we know that defiance has this negative connotation. So the parents that are writing to you that are basically saying, I don't want my kid to defy. And as children, we get so much training in compliance, you know, that essentially I had a masterclass in compliance growing up.

3:43And then when I got older, I began to realize as I delved into the research that there's some real problems with this. I mean, in my own life, I did what was expected of me. I became a physician. That was my first career, largely due to expectations. And I'm now an organizational psychologist, which I love. And if you look at the research, sometimes it is bad to be so good. So in medicine, for example, there was a survey that found that on average, nine out of 10 healthcare workers don't feel comfortable speaking up when they see their colleague or a physician making a mistake. So they're situations you want people to be speaking up.

4:27Another survey of over 1 ,700 crew members on a commercial airline, about half of them don't feel comfortable saying something when they see a mistake. So it can be these life and death decisions. But even if they're not, if you're constantly doing what other people tell you to do all the time and you don't develop the skill for defiance, it can create some real problems as you become older. So many directions I think we can go in. But I think those are such amazing practical examples of where anyone listening would say, please speak up. I'm sorry there's an issue on the plane. I'm sorry you see someone making a mistake on another human's body.

5:06speak up that makes sense to speak up but i think what's so powerful to kind of zoom out on is well of course it makes sense to speak up when someone's making a medical mistake but if nine out of ten people wouldn't where does that come from because it must mean that for so many of the early years of our life. It was adaptive to kind of smile and go along with things and almost ignore a signal in your body that was probably saying, I'm not so sure about this. I'm not so sure about this. And that kind of difference between an internal signal and what you imagine or really is the demand of your environment, leads us to kind of get into those habits, even play them out in a life or death situation.

5:59Yeah, absolutely. That internal signal, first of all, is really important. I actually call it, that's the stage one of defiance, right? And it can manifest in different ways in people. Like, so some people will feel sort of unease in their stomach. Some people will feel a dry mouth. Other people will get a headache. So it's different for every person, but it is a signal. And what's unfortunate is that a lot of people try to sweep it away that, oh, this isn't worth my anxiety. It's not worth my doubt. The other person probably knows better. I'm not going to say anything in this situation or I'm not going to do anything.

6:34I also discovered in my research a powerful psychological force I call insinuation, anxiety. And this is a distinct type of anxiety that people feel when they become concerned or worried that saying no or rejecting somebody's advice and not following their suggestion indicates that they don't trust the other person. So it sort of implies that the other person is untrustworthy, incompetent, or there's something wrong. They don't want to give a negative evaluation to someone else. So when we think about anxiety and all the things that we feel when we have anxiety, A lot of people might be familiar with social anxiety or performance anxiety where you're worried about how you are going to be judged.

7:23Insinuation anxiety is kind of the reverse. It's like I don't want to give a negative signal to someone else. So is insinuation anxiety like I don't want this doctor to think I don't trust them. I don't want this doctor to think that I don't think they're a good doctor or I'm thinking parenting. Someone asked me to be on a committee. let's say I just know I have no time to do this. I don't want them. I don't want to make it seem like the committee's unimportant. Right. And so and then does that lead us to shut down that first feeling? It leads us to comply. It keeps us silent and it leads us silent and compliant when we would rather say no.

8:02And so it is a very powerful force. And, you know, it is there for a reason. We want harmonious relationships. We don't want to be implying that the person next to you is stupid, inconsiderate. You know, your boss doesn't know better. We don't want to be sort of sending those signals out too much. But sometimes if we only think about the person that's standing right in front of us, we miss the bigger picture.

8:35let's just say that it is someone asked me hey do you want to be on this committee we are really looking for another person and the first signal in my body is becky like you already feel run to the ground you have this other committee you're doing or maybe i'm not but whatever the season of my life does not allow for this. And I have this first stage, like you said, the first stage is tension. Yes. And then maybe through this insinuation anxiety, I think, oh, Sunita, if I say no to her, is going to think that I think her committee is stupid or something like that. Or unimportant. Right. Unimportant.

9:08What's really interesting about that is I'm taking my signal in my body and kind of making it about what you might think. Right. Right. Instead of Taking my signal in my body and thinking about what it means in terms of what I think. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So we're missing like the stage two of defiance is really acknowledging that tension to ourselves and figuring out what does it mean? What does it mean for me? You know, why am I actually experiencing the tension? What is the conflict between what I really want to do and what is expected of me? And so let's just go with this example. the acknowledgement might be hold on a second I have this gut feeling or I have this butterfly feeling whatever it is let me take a moment and just wonder what it's about and maybe my brain saying Sunita is going to be so mad and she's not going to want to be friends with you and you know I don't want to make her think her committee is unimportant but then because I know these steps I say hold on what does this just mean what might be going on for me because I'm probably not having the signal in my body because I think Sunita's committee is unimportant Like, no, it might have something to do with me.

10:17And then I might think, I wonder if the signal is telling me this is just not the season to commit to that, you know, committee. Right. It could be you feeling overwhelmed that day and you've been feeling overwhelmed maybe for a long time. And this is not something you can take on and do well. Or maybe you just don't have the skill set for it. Right. It could be that's a fantastic committee. And so and so would be really great on it. Wouldn't be great for me. So there's a lot of reasons why we could feel that way. And I do want to distinguish between like just having an emotional reaction to it, to sort of feeling this tension between what somebody else expects and what you think is the right thing to do.

10:59So that aspect of really holding up that tension to the light rather than a knee jerk reaction, but thinking about why is it that I feel so uncomfortable? What is this telling me? And so really connecting with what it means for you. Yeah. OK, I like to complete things. So I'm counting the stages of defiance so far. So there's tension, there's acknowledgement. Yes, to yourself. The third stage, which is a really critical stage, is vocalizing to somebody else. And the reason this is a critical stage is because the research shows if you can get to this stage, you're more likely to get to the end stage of defiance.

11:38And there's a couple of reasons for that. The main one is if you tell someone else that you're not comfortable with this, then you can't go back in time and say, oh, yeah, actually, it was fine. I think I could do it. Right. You have too much cognitive dissonance. So that's why it's really great to to say something. And then also, if you say something, you've changed the environment around you, even if it's something like I'm not comfortable with this. or could you tell me more or ask for some clarifying questions, you can still be in a subservient position at this point. You could just have some of these scripts in your back pocket.

12:13Like, I'm not entirely sure. Let me get back to you. You know, taking a pause is really great. Yeah. But just getting that to that point where you're not complying immediately. You're just basically saying, tell me more. Tell me more about this or I'm not quite comfortable with this. It's one of the first things I say when parents tell me I'm always saying yes to things when I know internally I want to say no. I'm like, what should I say in the moment? And I would say to expect yourself to go from saying yes immediately to having some beautiful script as a way of saying no, like no human can do that by time, by time.

12:48I'm going to just one line in your head. Let me get back to you. Thanks for asking. Let me get back to you. Because time can allow us to do some of those next steps. It's time and physical presence. If you can take some time away from the person in front of you, then you can see the bigger picture. You can see how it's going to affect you, your family, other people that you might not even know. So rather than a nurse just thinking about how the physician is going to react, you can think about the patient and the larger environment. So there's a lot of things with having both physical distance or maybe even psychological distance if you can't get away to get yourself that distance from the person asking.

13:27I love that. OK, and then what are the final stages? So stage three is that vocalization. Stage four is that this is now where you're going to say you can't comply. It's your threat of noncompliance. It's just say I can't I can't do it. And so just sticking to that rather than being like burdened down to going back to stages. I used to hover between stages two and three a lot in my life, you know, and then try and dismiss the tension and go back and forth. So it's not always linear. You can jump as well. Like if you're defying for someone else, definitely I learned to defy a lot when it was for my son because I found it easier to take responsibility in those, you know, and not maybe follow completely the doctor's order.

14:13Maybe I'll get a second opinion. You know, I would like to wait. I don't want to jump into that. So sometimes it's easier to defy for someone else. But stage four is that threat of noncompliance. And then stage five is the final act of defiance, is implementing it. And what's wonderful about that stage is that if you can get to that stage and actually follow through, that tension that I mentioned right at the beginning in stage one, that dissipates. It melts away. So it's actually more joyful, more honest. It's more authentic. You are living in alignment with who you are and your values and what you can manage.

14:55So it's really important to learn that skill, because if we don't, if we think of defiance, if we think of saying no as being such a negative aspect of ourselves, we are just going to continue to comply. And in the end, let other people down. It's not always the safe option. So let me talk about like some of the different definitions a little bit. So when I talk about compliance, like what do we mean by compliance? Compliance is something that's externally imposed. So something that somebody else wants, an order, a suggestion or maybe even society's expectations. Right. It's something that's coming from outside us that we're complying with.

15:33Having done medicine, I love contrasting compliance and consent and how they are actually different. because in medicine we have informed consent. And for informed consent, you need five elements. So first of all, capacity. You need to have the competence to do it so you're not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, you're not too sick. Then you need to have knowledge. So you need to be given information about the decision. So you need to be informed. But it's not enough just to get the information, you need to understand it. So that's the third element, a thorough understanding of the risks, the benefits, the alternatives.

16:11And then the fourth element is the freedom to say no. Because if you don't have the freedom to say no, then it's merely compliance, it's not consent. And if you have those four elements, then the fifth one is your authorization, which is either what I call a true yes, which is consent, or it's your true no, which is defiance. And both of those things, consent, dissent or defiance as something that's internally driven, something that's a thoroughly considered decision based on your own values. Yeah. And it's really helpful. And I think just for people listening. Right. And we'll talk about kids next.

16:51That when you say no to somebody. Right. You are often saying yes to yourself. Like, I know I can't commit to this committee. and so I guess I'm saying no to Sunita but I'm also really saying yes to myself because if I say yes to Sunita I'm I'm in some ways I'm acting in defiance or I'm saying no to something that actually feels really important to me and I think so many of us were brought up especially as girls to do that all the time we are so well practiced we are expert in saying no to the things that we might want for ourselves and we are so good at noticing what the world wants of us and this framework tries to, you know, help us take steps to rebalance that.

17:34Absolutely. I mean, this is why I really got involved in this research is why do we find it so difficult to say no? And especially like a lot of my experiments I've done in the US, also in the UK. So they're two countries that pride themselves on independence and free thinking and agency. And yet even in really simple experiments, people comply at shockingly high rates. So when I talk about distance in private, they choose like what they truly want, but in public under pressure, they're doing something very different. And the results are really quite dramatic as to why are we doing this? And a lot of the time it's that we haven't been trained in how to defy.

18:12We find it awkward. We find it uncomfortable. We find it confrontational. And so if we haven't learned how to do it, we end up saying yes a lot. We end up saying either being silent, being compliant and getting ourselves in situations that we would rather not be in. I think that's right. And it is something I talk to a lot of parents about because a lot of families, especially with multiple kids, right, they'll say like, this is kind of my defiant problem kid. And some version of, why can't this kid be more similar to his brother, his sister, who's always so good? And right. And I think this idea of like, especially a good girl, I was that too growing up no longer.

18:55Watch out. But all we're really saying is it's like a coded way of saying compliant to external expectations. Right. Exactly. I mean, what do we mean by good? Oh, she does. She listens to her parents so well. Right. And she did everything that I asked her to. And, you know, she's looking after other people. She's all of these things mean good means compliant. Yes. And what does it mean to be defiant? Well, you know, yeah, that could also be good. If everybody else is being mean to a particular child, are you going to be the one that says something? Especially children, they care about kindness.

19:32They care about fairness. It's not like they don't know their values and what's important to them. So how can they feel more comfortable in those situations to act the way that they would hope to?

19:54It's so easy to think about it in terms of extremes. Do we want our kids sometimes to take care of other people? Of course. Do we want our kids to listen to us sometimes? Yes, we do, right? And so no one has to be one extreme or the other. But I think what's interesting, and you and I are both kind of stories of this, is we worry a lot more about our kids who are defiant than our kids who are good and easy. Right. Right. But one of the things I always say to parents is I don't know any parent of older kids who says, oh, my 25 year old daughter, she is so compliant. She listens to everything people say.

20:31I'm so proud of her. Like nobody's ever said that. You're like, oh, that's so creepy. What? You don't even want that in your 25 year old. Her boss put her in an uncomfortable situation and she said, no problem. Like obviously we'd want our kid at age 25 to be able to notice their discomfort. and to say, I trust this enough to do something about it. But that ability isn't gifted to someone at age 25. It's not like, here you have it. Now that you're out of my house, here you go, right? And so sometimes, and I don't want to be fear-mongering here, but sometimes I worry, I don't want to say more about, but I worry equally at least about the kids who I'm told that kid's never had a tantrum.

21:17that kids never put up a fight about a decision. Never, right? That you want your kid, even if it's inconvenient when they're younger and we both know as moms, it is, but they need that practice. Yes, they do. And they sometimes need to be encouraged to state what they want. Same one. So if we think, if we're always telling them to obey us, how can they actually then determine what it is that they truly want? And if they're always disregarding the tension, then what do they learn? I'm going to swallow this in the future. Something seems wrong here, but I'm just going to hold my tongue. I'm going to just maybe shake my head a little, but go along with what everybody else is doing.

22:04And we teach our kids to be maybe scared of strangers. But as you're saying, what if it's your boss? What if it's your friends? At what point are you going to be saying, that's not me? I would rather not do that. And I think this is where some of those inconveniences of childhood pay off in spades, right? Because I like to paint a vivid picture. This is the reality. Like, imagine you're now, I don't know, 20 year old daughter, let's say in college, and she's at a bar. Someone's approaching her and they're having a nice conversation, maybe a little flirtatious. And then things kind of, quote, escalate like, hey, come home with me.

22:41right she doesn't know this person it feels exciting and let's say there's this tension in her body like i don't know about this yes and one of two circuits activate one is i've gotten really really good at having tension and turning it off and instead looking to someone else and doing what they seem to want of me or i have learned to tune into that tension honor it enough to be curious about it. Yes. And prioritize some of that feeling, even if it might be in opposition with what someone wants of me. Yeah. And when parents say to me, like, are you saying that the childhood experiences someone has, like that relates to that moment?

23:27And I was like, I would bet my life on it like 100 percent. It's the same circuit. It's the same. And you don't even have to be waiting till you're 25, right? To have these negative, like I was speaking to a teacher, a middle school teacher that was telling me all about like the eighth graders went on a trip the year before they had problems with what was being said on group chats. And so they did some of the exercises in my book, you know, what's the line that you wouldn't cross or what's the time that you backed it in a way that you wish you hadn't. And it was all about like, you know, didn't speak up in this group chat, even though it got really terrible.

24:04The mob mentality that happened when we went on the school trip. I was part of that. I got into serious trouble. And it's why. Why are these things happening? Because it's difficult to speak up and say something in situations if you've never been taught how to do it. That's exactly right. And so, you know, I think about my own kids. I have three kids and one of them is just more oriented than the others to kind of notice the environment and kind of what is what do other people want of me we actually had this conversation the other day and we were talking about that and just having an honest conversation that could be an amazing thing and that is a superpower in a way and all of our superpowers can end up working against us too because as we tune in to what people want of us so much we can start to really tune out to the signals our body is giving us and i think that's my kid, if I think about all of them, where that kid does need a little prompting.

25:00No, you don't have to switch seats at the table right now, even though your sibling is whining, oh, I wanted that seat. No, like, by the way, if it was a different kid who's very tuned into themselves, I'd be like, we're going to switch your seat, okay? But this kid, this kid needs help from me helping keep that seat, you know, defying a little bit. Right. And all of those things and the way that we sort of parent for compliance and parent for compliance, defiance is really important because those lessons stay with us and we remember them and we remember how our parents act too. Yes, that's exactly right.

25:41And I think one of the things that, you know, one of my favorite programs in our app is about these strong-willed, classically labeled defiant kids. And they often do happen in families where there is this kind of very good compliant, there's like a binary. And I think one of the things that's interesting is that one of the things the defiant kids often need to, in some moments at least, be a little more cooperative in a way that often works for them, because sometimes the defiance works against them is the other sibling to take up a little bit more of the defiance space. Right. You know, and it's almost this paradoxical intervention of him.

26:16He's like, wait, the problem in the family isn't the defiant kid. It's the compliant kid. And neither one has to be the problem. But the problem is that your kids are so extreme. You have 100 % defiance and 100 % compliance. Let's rejigger. Let's rejigger the percentages. Yes. I'd love to get practical. I know there's people listening here. What's like in your starter pack? Like, let's say there's a starter pack for people, even in adulthood, not just with their kids, but probably for themselves, maybe like little acts of defiance. Like, how can you start? How can you start? Well, the very first thing I would say is have a mindset shift of what we think about what defiance is.

26:54Like, we often think about defiance as being loud, bold and aggressive for rule breakers. And if we start thinking like that, you know, I was like as a child and even like as a young adult, like, you know, defiance is for other people. It's not for me. And that is really thinking of defiance as a personality trait. And it's actually just a skill. And it's one that we can learn. So having this mindset shift, we can defy in a way that's natural to us, that represents a skill. It doesn't have to be loud. There's ways to be quietly defiant where we can live in alignment with our values without having to be aggressive about it.