Idolising Children?

The surprise of the New Year was to find out I was being quoted in the New York Times.

That be said, it was one line. But, hey, it was a mention in the New York Times.

The article from Brian Stelter gives a reasonable overview of the argument. I feel he left me a little short though. The full quote from which my quote was taken was:

Adults may think it is respectful to let children make their own decisions, but it isn’t. Especially at a young age children don’t have enough experience or knowledge to make a wide range of decisions. Respect is supporting children’s development, guiding their decision-making and giving them the capacity to understand that you can’t do everything.

But, with a National Press Club in Washington, an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and David Letterman’s The Late Show and the announcement by the Australian Government that Bindi with be a “tourism ambassador” for Australia we have an eight-year-old girl whose father has recently died, whose mother is still grieving, keeping the schedule of an A-grade celebrity. And, not one person is standing up and saying, “Is this appropriate?”

At the time my issue was, and still is, the idea that respecting children means letting them make all of their own decisions. This simply isn’t the case. Children need to have their development supported and this means in the case of children engaged in public life they need to be supported to enjoy what they are doing, but also adults need to make decisions when enough is enough.

Over at the Fairfax Whose your daddy? blog, Sacha Molitorisz has blogged a bit about parenting books. He has his own coming out in August - a dad focussed one to help fill a bit of that void.

He gives Idolising Children a run…and proceeds to include a few paragraphs from an email discussion about the book.

Very generous of him. Thanks Sacha. Enjoy the trip to Germany.

Over at Eureka Street, which is emerging as a quality online journal since its paper version demise, children’s publisher Hilary Rogers reflects beautifully on the dilemma of raising children in a world that we didn’t grow up in and know and understand as they do. (Read it here)

Within her discussion of the challenges of publishing books that will entertain and support the development of our children are some of the key points raisied in Idolising Children. How do we include children? How do we produce media for them in a respectful way? DO we idealise our own childhood and how does it effect the way we support the development of children today?

Hilary’s final point is perfect. She tells us we must listen, but also shows the reality of the challenges of a world that needs to compete to sell products/books:

Ultimately, we need to listen, not just remember. Books have to compete with Foxtel and Playstation in a way that they used to compete with roller-skating and Dynasty re-runs for me. I’d love to think the books we are making now might one day belong in that charmed, timeless exceptions section, but first I’d like to make books that kids love now. I won’t put chocolate under those flaps, but it’s tempting.

No doubt Hardie Grant will be putting out some quality books with a publisher who engages with the issues in this way. Respect to them.

In The Brisbane Line, Michael Gard has a great piece that discusses how our common sense beliefs around childhood obesity do not align with the evidence.

As it happens, a number of studies have tried to measure whether the amount of physical activity that children do has changed over time. The results of these studies are consistently startling or under-whelming, depending on your point of view. They show no obvious decline in childhood physical activity and, in some cases, small increases. The results are pretty much the same from studies in the US, the UK and Australia.

Gard points out that research is even ignored because it doesn’t match our common sense beliefs about childhood obesity. This dogma, I’d argue, stems from our idolising of children. We are so cought up about how we believe children should be and what want childhood and youth to look like we ignore the treality of what it really is.

Gard has just started putting some of these ideas in the public sphere. I’m looking forward to more of his work.

Today’s Sunday Age editorial says we need to talk to children more to help with their language development. Of course.

But, again we see another example of how our idolising of children impacts on our children’s lives. We are busy driving them around to music, dance and swimming lessons we are forgetting the basics.

The bigger question needs to be - what do we have to say to our children?

If we acknowledge that children are capable of understanding the world at a level of development relevent to them we have lots to say. How do we explain economics to a 6 years old? How do we answer all the questions they have in a way that is supportive, rather than dismissive?

Parents all have their own unique ways. And, soemtimes we will be tired and not up to it?

We don’t need more parenting books with the right answers for each question appropriate to a child’s age. This is about us learnign as well, and answering as best we can? Or still, find ways to get children to find their own answers.

At a local school they have a “what I’m thinking” board where children put up questions and then other students try and help work out where to find the answers. This is the education must head, in a way that teaches children to be active (rather than passive learners) in the 21st century.

In today’s New Matilda:

Moria Rainer, former Director of the Office of the Children’s Rights Commissioner for London and current Vice President of Defence for Children International (Australian Section) asks why WA has introduced madatory reporting of child abuse. (only accessible to subscribers)

“That is why, having spent most of my life as an advocate for the human rights of children, I believe that the implementation process should be publicly overseen, and I do not support mandatory reporting, because:

It doesn’t reduce child abuse; It doesn’t help the families of abused children; It doesn’t prevent recidivism, or protect other children from harm from the same offender; It discriminates against some groups; It doesn’t lead to timely, appropriate or welcome assistance to the children and families; because
there is no link between a mandated report and the mandatory delivery of an appropriate service for that child and family.”

Her experience, her commitment and her deep understanding of the issues, policies and systems around the world make her opinion a powerful one. But, despite all this knowledge - why do governments persist in implementing policy that is of no measurable benefit for children.

I believe it is caught up in our idolising of childhood and youth. Rather than respecting children and young people and accepting the responsibility we have in children’s lives (whether they are ours or not) is more difficult than implementing legislation that gives the perception that something has been done about child abuse.

Child abuse is as complex as it is destructive. That complexity requires complex solutions. Mandatory reporting protects politicans more than it protects children because while it has no measurable effect on supporting children and protecting them from child abuse, it protects politicians because it looks like they are taking a strong and decisive stand against child abuse. The fact is, they are not.

A strong and decisive stand against child abuse would be rooted in a deep respect for children and young people. It would mean investing much more in intensive programs that help families to begin to make sense of themselves, that give them the financial support that would allow them to concentrate on the deeper problems. It means respecting the broader role we have in supporting each other and childrne and families in our community - rather than picking up the telephone and passing that responsibility to a large and cumbersome government department.

Child protection agenies across Australia are struggling. I know from personal experience that the lack of investment in these services limits their ability to do effective work. And, when the work is not effective, it can be just as destructive as families that are not part of the system. There are great ideas and small initaives doing great work. But, no government seems prepared to invest in identifying them and then rolling them out on a larger scale. Instead - they draw up legislation about mandatory reporting and police checks for staff of children’s services.

A world that respected childhood would spend more time trying to help their parents and community support them, rather than just taking them away.

I applaud Moira Rainer. And, hope her ideas get published much wider than New Matilda.

There are blogs for everything.

Economists musing on politics, life and everything else. Emo teens expressing their angst and depression amid slightly thicker eyeliner (though not as think as goths). There are craft blogs, and blogs of pregnant women or soon-to-be dads. There are blogs people write pretending to be their pets and blogs that cover real time conflicts that get turned into books.

But, in my wanderings I haven’t found any blogs that discuss the policies and systems that govern the lives of children and families. (I’m happy for people to point me to one)

There are many blogs about parenting and countless message boards and online forums where parents band together for support, suggestions in those hours when bub just won’t sleep. But, few blogs discussing what childcare should really look like? How education or children’s media could be different? A blog that looks at what governments are doing in regards to children and whether it is what needs to be done?

This is what the Idolising Children blog aims to do.

The book, Idolising Children has been described as an anti-parenting manual. In a way that is an attempt to define it as different from the hundreds of books in the parenting section of your local bookshop. Idolising Children wants to find new ways of thinking about childhood and youth and then use our new idea of childhood to reshape the systems that guide our children’s lives.

How young should children be before they are allowed to vote in elections?
How can we support children to participate in the governance models of our businesses and organisations?
What knowledge and understanding can children give to us that we don’t have?

The questions in this blog need to be challenging. They need to be questions that are rarely, if ever asked. They need to be like this to help shift my own thinking. The extremes are only dangerous if pursued with speed. But, in the long term that can prove to be crucial. Remember that economist Milton Friedman was seen as an extremist about 50 years ago…

The fundamental point this blog will make over and over again is that we must respect children, not just as children, but as human beings and contributing members of our society.

That means that “the children are out future” line is useless and of no value in the ideas we will discuss here. To me, it is a cop out, children are here now and can participate now. By, talking about them as the future, we are ignoring the role they can play in our society now.

At the emotional core, children are the same us. They are more capable than we give them credit for - and this doesn’t mean they can learn to read and write earlier, it means they are engaging, learning and developing in ways we have not yet come to understand…and maybe we shouldn’t. Because if we do, we will again try and manipulate the process of growing up and developing into capable, competent adults.

I hope you enjoy reading.

Idolising Children is my first book.

This blog intends to build upon the ideas and examples presented in idolising children and develop into a body of work that outlines a new direction for child and family policy.

How successful that will be I don’t know, but what I do know is the response so far to Idolising Childen children has been that the ideas in it have needed to be articulated for some time. I will elaborate on what I want this blog to be in a later post…

The irony of this blog is that in the past I’ve been quite critical of this mode of writing. Some aspects of blogging culture reminds me of my time involved with the spoken word scene in Melbourne - we became so involved in what we were doing we thought it was far greater and more important than it actually was. It happens in many subcultures. We all want to be more than we are (well, most of us).

Bloggers have the capacity to do this, we all do.

The nature of the blogging writing style lends itself to grand claims and bold rants, while also exposing unknown vulnerabilities and beautiful ideas. The rawness of blog posts is soemthing that has struck me in recent times. It is appealing.

I’m not certain blogs will have the lasting influence that others believe they will. But, I do know the more I read the more I appreciate many posts and one of the reasons I find myself here was thanks to the Blogging feature on Online Opinion put together (in the main) by the folks at Club Troppo.

The folks at Larvatus Prodeo took me to task when I decided to write about blogging. Not the smartest thing to do really, publish a piece online where you question the value of blogs. Of course bloggers are going to read it and have a go. And, I guess you could say they win - in a way. I still claim I was dudded by the sub-editors at Online Opinion by the title of the piece I wrote. It surely sparked the reaction more than the content did. But - here I am folks. Joining the ranks.

How important are blogs? It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is the quality of the content and the interest it maintains. The value of each individual blog to those who read it is, in my opinion, greater than the blogosphere as a whole.

I still see blogs as having the capacity to waste time, or at least take it up. I still have reservations about the way blogs are often driven by the ego and the capacity they have for publicly flaming someone.

But, whatever the case may be - I am now here. Another few kilobytes helping the blogosphere to grow. I hope to contribute something. I hope to avoid typos as much as possible. There is room for a blog on children and family - that isn’t about parenting. This is the gap this blog aims to fill.