There are still a lot of personality differences within each gender. I was the compliant child, but DD8 is definitely not. She quit complying at the end of Kindergarten, missed a lot of recess in 1st for not doing her work (which I was unaware of until later), and in 2nd has managed a compromise of doing the absolute minimum so that the teacher can put a grade in the grade book. The problem with the non-compliant child is the school comes back with "she won't even do X so we don't have to do anything else for her". Her teacher thinks that she should take some initiative to challenge herself in her work. At school she doesn't act out or complain, which may be typical of girls, but she doesn't want to do the useless work and the teachers aren�t interested in helping her. If she were more compliant, the teachers might have a more favorable opinion of her, which could be beneficial.
I think a lot of kids are quietly miserable since they don�t know what to ask - they just know they're miserable - which is why advocating for them is so important.
