we live in a childless world
thoughts
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thoughts 〰️
I was enjoying a day out during the summer break as one does. Going to different places in town that I was familiar with. Then I noticed, one place after the next, how many children I was seeing. I mostly noticed by the amount of time I had to step to the side or stop my steps before a toddler could run straight into my legs.
I wasn’t used to paying that much attention to what was down when I walked, so naturally I noticed that change in habit. But it also made me realise this wasn’t a habit. Because the only time there were children roaming in the streets and in cafes and in cinemas often enough for me to notice them was on the summer break.
I know this feels silly. I’m a teacher, I already go out at weekends so I should have noticed kids being out much earlier. But it’s different. On weekends, everyone is out. The crowd is such that you don’t notice whether they are adults, children, elderly or teens. But on a Tuesday it was much more noticeable to see the usual people + kids. But it also made me realise something, unless you have children yourself, seeing kids becomes an anomaly. Something out of your routine.
Isn’t that crazy? An entire category of the population is absent from your daily life. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or if it doesn’t matter, but it’s interesting to think about. Are you missing out on something by not interacting with children? Have you ever tried having a conversation with a toddler? It’s wild. And if English is your second language, prepare for your linguistic skills to be put to the test.
We have to be missing out, there’s no way. When we’re young we have such a different perception of what is around us, and so many questions, so much wonder. Many things we don’t always bring with us into adulthood, but that contain lessons we could probably still use even in our very much serious adult life. And we lose that.
There’s probably something about empathy too. Caring for children makes you aware of so many things. I’ve noticed it ever since becoming a teacher. You spend such an important part of your day watching kids to make sure they behave and don’t endanger themselves, that when the weekend comes, you do the exact same thing. The amount of times I’ve wanted to tell kids I didn’t know to stop running in a place because it was dangerous, but had to shut my mouth because there I wasn’t one of the caregivers. I was just a rando on the street and it wasn’t my responsibility.
But shouldn’t it be? People in our generation love to bring back the “It takes a village.” sentence. Romanticising a time where everyone helped each other out and families and citizens raised their children as a community. Of course there was a mom and dad, but if the kids went to play near your apple tree, you’d be keeping an eye out. Well what about now? Shouldn’t we all feel responsible when there are children present? They are the future of our world, the next generations. They’ll carry with them what we give them and most importantly what we model.
Don’t be mistaken, most of the learning children do does not come from what you tell them but from what they see you do. But what do we model? The disappearance of content dedicated to children, of children places, of colours. When children are there and being children, we’re annoyed and want them gone.
Don’t get me wrong, children can be loud and annoying. But they deserve to exist in our space too. A pool. A cafe. The beach. A restaurant. A cinema. A theatre.
None of theses places are children/adult/senior only. They are a communal space meant to be shared as a community. That comes with its ups and downs. But we get so used to not seeing them that when children are there they will often be perceived as a nuisance. They are learning. You might romanticise your own childhood as much as you want but I can promise you that you have annoyed people too.
It’s a part of the process, a lesson on tolerance for adults to learn. Yes you didn’t ask for them, but they didn’t ask to be born either. Now they’re here. You all cry about injustice when you see monkeys in a zoo being mean to a baby monkey who isn’t their child. Going on and on about how you’d take care of them because everyone else is so mean. How about looking at our behaviour through that same lens?
I don’t have a solution for this. I’m a teacher, I’m not going to say children need to be in the streets. School is definitely important for both their education and social circle/skills (even though at times it might just feel like a place the government wants to leave the kids so the parents can go make money, given how little they invest in the education department).
I just have a message, for me, for you, for all of us. Childless or not.
Going down the street without seeing a single child is not what your brain should remember as the norm.
We are not in a childless world.
Pay attention to our next generation.
We are all scared about what’s going to happen with climate change and recent radical politic movements. They will grow up to deal with all its consequences, without the current agency to do anything about it, the least we can do is be kind to them.
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