ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

From the book Seen and Heard: Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Education: "Adults might try, when possible, to offer wisdom gained from experience rather than use life experience to justify control. When we offer instead of command, children maintain the power to refuse."

The book's authors, Ellen Lynn Hall and Jennifer Kofkin Rudkin, explain, "Adults disallow children's opportunities to make decisions by either forbidding behaviors or turning probabilities into certainties. 'If you don’t get down from there you're going to fall.' If the child should fall, adults might further assert their power (at the price of empathy) with the hard-to-resist, 'I told you so.'"

Hall and Rudkin offer a way for adults to hold themselves accountable for their use of control:

"Respecting children's rights requires that adults assert control in measured ways and provide reasons for assertions of control... Sometimes adults do not have compelling reasons for their directives. A pause to consider 'why' gives a chance to clarify their reasons to themselves as well as children. This opens the possibility for adults to realize that their constraints on children's decision making were not warranted. I have had to concede, for example, that pancakes for breakfast offer no nutritional advantage over chips and salsa."

Using examples from a Reggio-inspired school with children from ages 6 weeks to 6 years, the authors emphasize the importance of children's rights and our responsibility as adults to hear their voices. This book offers strategies educators can use to ensure the inclusion of children's perspectives in everyday decisions. Learn More

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