01/05/2025
Imagine a world where we said, what’s going on with the children? So many of them are angry and distressed after school. So many of them are shut in their bedrooms. So many of them are anxious and unhappy. So many of them disillusioned at 15.
Imagine if we didn’t think the problem was them. If we weren’t giving diagnoses like ‘after school restraint collapse’ or ‘anxiety based school avoidance’ & putting them on behaviour programmes, but instead we saw their distress as a klaxon call saying ‘Something is wrong’?
Maybe we’d look at their lives and ask ourselves what it’s like to be young in 2023. We’d see the pressure they are under and we’d ask if that’s necessary in their one and only childhood. We’d ask if they really need to spend their childhood taking tests and being ranked.
We’d build adventure playgrounds & make schools places full of opportunities and choices. We’d surround them with adults who valued their voices & helped them to learn about things they love, We’d build workshops and studios where they could learn skills and find meaning.
We’d value their differences and nurture their individuality. We’d make spaces for play. We’d start with relationships, always, and we’d offer them chances to challenge themselves. We’d surround them in unconditional acceptance and we’d help them recover when they messed up.
We’d tell them there are second chances, and third, and fourth and that there is never only one way in life. We’d give them hope for the future, and we’d show them we believed in them, even when they fail. We’d show them that success happens in many ways.
We’d listen to what they said & take them seriously. We’d stop assuming we always know best & we’d let them make some choices themselves. We’d tell them they can’t be ‘behind’ because there is no race. We’d let them make mistakes & we’d be there to catch them when they fell.
We might say, we’re sorry the world is in such a mess. We didn’t mean your childhood to be about pandemics, and climate disaster, and economic meltdown and mounting costs. We want you to feel safe, because you are our children. We owe you that.
There are things we can’t control - but other things we can. Our priority for childhood could be emotional well-being, relationships & opportunity. We’d choose joy. We’d make happiness an key educational outcome. We’d judge schools by how pleased children were to be there.
What would happen, if we saw the distress of children as a warning call? Not a problem in them, to be dealt with by professionals, but a sign that something isn’t right in the world. What If we listened to the tears of children & we asked, how could we do better? What then?
Photo by on Unsplash.
