THE RIGHTSOF CHILDREN

Protecting the rights of children with medical needs in the early childhood setting

Protecting the rights of children with medical needs in the early childhood setting

Paul Goodman, in his many talks with young people, used to say that one good way to work for a really distinct and better world was to act in their daily lives, as far they could, as if that world existed. What would you manage, he would ask them, if the world had become more or less the kind of place you want it to be; how would you reside, and how would you treat other people? Live that way now, treat them that way now.(Dale, 2002) If something prevents you, trial to find a way to deal with that. We can start to treat children, even the youngest and smallest, while we may find them, as we would want every individual to treat them in the society we are seeking to make.

Center Policy

We can start by seeking to be courteous to them. This will be very tough for those who have been taught by know-how only to be servile to the strong and impolite and bossy toward the weak or those who have learned to believe of children as love objects and to treat them as they would a favorite dog or cat. For to be courteous we should first of all respect the other person's dignity and sense of self. We should treat him with a certain formality and reserve until we find out how he would like to be treated. We must respect not just his physical but his emotional life space until he shows us how far into that space he is ready to greeting us.(Dale, 2002) And though being courteous means much more than only being gracious, it means at least that. So we must trial to learn to say "Please" or "Excuse Me" or "Thank You" to children, and in the same pitch of voice we would use to anyone else. We must not treat a child like a servant and demand from him favors or services that we would not believe of asking of someone our own age. Indeed, because he is new in this world, and gets his sense of it from how we be- have toward him, we would manage well to show him extra courtesy like the wise parents who said to ...