The Rights of Children

By Reverend Treespeaker

Copyright 2001

All Rights Reserved

There’s a great old Celtic instrumental piece of music I learned to play this year.  It’s called “The Rights of Man”.  It’s a booming piece!  If you ever hear a cellist play it, you’ll surely understand the demands this poor soul was trying to express so long ago.  You can almost hear him screaming for his rights.  Yet, this is a piece of music, not some declaration document.  He wished to express his right to freedom, but at the time in history, he was making no significant changes.

If I could, and maybe some day I will, write a piece of music of my own.  There is a time for everything, or so the story goes.  The voices of slaves were heard.  The voices of women in the name of suffrage were heard.  Each time period opens our eyes to a new voice, a new group of people we should accept as a free thinking and free expressing people.  Most recently, gays and lesbian groups have found formats from which to launch ideas, rights and concerns.

This new decade calls for the voices of children to be heard.  In my clergy work with the poor and homeless, I’ve come to realize that children are the highest number of members in the homeless part of society.  They are the first to starve to death and freeze to death.  I once read that the current status of children compares with that of a feudal system surf. 

So many people have been shocked by the fact that I let my children make their own choices about things in their lives.  I also let them have an equal say in the family decisions.  For some reason, people in general think that my treating my children as equals must mean they do whatever they want.  No, that’s not the case either.  I’m still a parent.  I still protect the kids if there is something really dangerous.  But within safety, children should have say in what goes on in their lives.

As a homeschooler, I believe this would also hold true.  Children who have a say about where their education is going tend to be more interested in that material for which they have chosen.  Remember how much more of a freedom choosing college classes seemed in comparison to high school?

Here’s a basic list of what most children, from my experience, have expressed to me.  Perhaps the United Nations next meeting on the issues of children and family should include what it has always lacked…..the voices of children.  Here’s what kids have said they wished for themselves and for their environments.

The Rights of Children

We the children have the right to good food, shelter, water and safety within our homes.  This doesn’t mean candy all the time nor does it mean gourmet.  It means food that tastes good that is good for us.  Since we were brought into this world without the skills for which to be independent, we have the right to be cared and provided for until we can care for ourselves.  This is our right and not a subject that should be held over our heads nor something for which we should be made to feel guilty.

We have the right to make decisions about our environment.  If there is a place in which we don’t feel safe, or worse, a place we feel threatened, we have the right to refuse to go to such a place.  No one should be forced to go to a place they feel threatened no matter how silly you think we are for feeling this way.

We have the right to an education that is multi-cultural, nurturing, encouraging and patient.  We have the right to learn at our own pace.  We have the right to be safe within the walls of the place for which we are learning.  We have the right to dignity and positive feedback while we learn every day.

We have the right to voice our ideas. 

We have the right to read books about controversial and mundane topics.   We have the right to ask questions about these works of literature, history and even controversy.

We have the right to know what is going on within our bodies.

We have the right to know if we are sick and to know if we are changing.  We have the right to know what is natural and what is an illness.  We have the right to make choices about our lives when we are very ill.      

We have the right to laugh.  We have the right to sing when we are happy and cry when we are sad.  We have the right to express our feelings to you in whatever way we are most capable at the time.  And most important, we have the right to be angry.  No one has the right to be violent.  But we as children have the right to say with words that we are angry and upset.  No one should be punished for feeling angry and saying it out loud.

Lastly, we have the right to be children.  We have the right to play.  We have the right to an imagination.  We have the right to look at the world through new eyes and create or invent new things within our world.  We have the right to see the world differently than you do and still be loved.