There have been a lot of protests in recent months and years. Teaching our children the value of taking a stand is important. But protests and taking a stand for what is right is not necessarily the same thing.
Most of the recent protests are, in my view, not helpful to our children. I say this at the outset so that if you’ve been involved and brought your children along to protests, I may wind you up if you continue to read this particular post…. So, perhaps you’d prefer to skip this one. And that’s absolutely fine. (But I hope if you do skip this post you’ll come back again next week.)
So, “when and how are we to take a stand” is the subject of this post, this week.
Should young children become political
I think protesting is within our democratic right and as free speech seems under threat, it’s important to value it and to use it.
However, protesting can be quite distressing to children who may see aggression as quite scary. Antagonism is quite an intense, sophisticated interaction. Much of the recent protesting over the last 18 months has been quite binary: hostile and often lacking in kindness or the view “to agree to disagree”.
“I totally disagree with what you’re saying but fully support your right to say it” is invaluable, I think. But in our current society, it seems to have become all but obsolete.
In that vein, I think many contemporary protests have shown hostility toward those whom they see as their counterparts, which has in turn, incited aggression, destruction and violence.
Right and Wrong
I believe it is important to teach our children right and wrong. But I also believe we need to be truthful with ourselves and with our children when we are expressing opinion rather than objective fact. We need to be gentle with our children, recognising their vulnerability..
There are so many opinions about which we as adults may feel passionately. But dragging our children to protests which are engulfed in anger, fear or hostility to another group borders on bigotry or prejudice. This, I think, can endanger our children emotionally, socially and intellectually. Let’s not do that.
Teach our children to love in spite of differences
Instead, I think we need to teach our children to accept different points of view as part of life, and learn to love others in spite of our different perspectives. It shows no less prejudice to despise a person for their point of view than it is to despise them for their different culture, skin colour, or religion. So, if we feel strongly about something we may feel we need to take a stand. But is it beneficial to our children to involve them?
Let’s weigh up the benefits and costs to our children when we involve them in our causes, and ensure their involvement offers a learning opportunity but not something that will teach them to hate anyone else.