Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Six-year-old Lucas adores Mo Willems’s series of picture books about a pigeon who is constantly told he cannot do things he wants to do. Shalaby suggests that Lucas’s affinity for these books stems from identification: He too has strong likes and dislikes that often bring him into conflict with others. While visiting the school counselor, for example, Lucas becomes attached to a plush toy and responds angrily when the counselor refuses to let him keep it. Lucas’s mother says that Lucas’s personality was evident even in the womb, when he sat on his twin’s neck.

Shalaby attends one of Lucas’s first days in first grade. Though impatient for the teacher, Mrs. Norbert, to begin reading during story time, he quickly grows bored; he fixates on a spot on his pants and then gets up to retrieve a different book. Mrs. Norbert scolds him, and Shalaby herself is surprised that he absorbed so few of the school’s “rules” during kindergarten. Upon reflection, however, she realizes how complex those rules actually are—particularly for a young child.

Lucas also struggles socially because his desires are so all-consuming: “[H]is tendency is to meet his own needs—to sit on other people’s necks” (52). He has a hard time adopting others’ viewpoints, even though his own seem self-evident.