Preface
Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around
Sharna Olfman
In the Fall of 2004, I had the pleasure of meeting Raffi Cavoukian, the children's troubadour through our mutual affiliation with the Council on Human Development (co-chaired by Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker). Known by millions of families throughout the world for his music, which speaks to the heart of childhood, Raffi is quickly gaining stature as a leading children's advocate, and as a systems thinker on the major issues that face humanity at a defining point in history. Through keen observation and a sensitive connection to children, his searching intellect, and his evolving dialogue with educators, economists, ecologists, mental health professionals, policy makers and spiritual leaders, Raffi has developed a new paradigm which he calls Child Honouring. It is visionary, eminently practical, and urgently needed.
In December, 2004, UNICEF released a document entitled Childhood Under Threat which states that the survival of more than half the world's children, numbering more than a billion, is now at risk. Twenty-nine thousand children are dying every day - mostly of preventable causes. More than three million are enmeshed in the sex trade. These statistics refer mainly to children living in third world countries. But children in wealthy nations are also suffering and record levels of obesity, mental illness, and violence provide ample testimony to our failure to meet their needs. For now, rich and poor nations differ dramatically in the ways that they fail children, but we will likely see these patterns merge in the fate of the next generation of children. Just prior to the 1992 Rio De Janeiro summit that led to the Kyoto Accord on climate change, half the world's Nobel laureates warned that we are on a collision course with nature, and many believe that we have only a generation in which to replenish and detoxify the earth. Meanwhile, industries continue to spew deadly toxins into our air, water, and soil. These toxins do not recognize national borders or socioeconomic status and can be found in human tissue, blood and breastmilk half way across the globe from their point of origin.
How do we restore our future? While many scholars and policy makers propose solutions that address the economic, political, ecological, or psychological dimensions of the problem, Raffi is offering a new approach that connects all of these, one which could turn our world into the global village we so urgently need to nurture and sustain future generations. He argues that we must make all vital decisions about ecological sustainability, the economy, national policy, and education, through the lens of what best serves the needs of young children. Children's exponential rate of development in the early years renders them exquisitely vulnerable to environmental influences. Their brains, bodies and psychological integrity are easily derailed by exposure to physical or psychic trauma. Conversely, wholesome and loving environments enable children to fully actualize their human potential. An actualized person is imbued with unfettered curiosity, enthusiasm, initiative and a growing sense of kinship with and respect for other living creatures. She is grounded in her family, her community, and connected to the natural order, and at the same time able to express herself and place her own personal stamp on the world. Her thinking is aligned with emotional and bodily experience, and infused with artistry, imagination and soulfulness. Healthy children grow into adults who have the will, wisdom, and creativity to harness new and emerging technologies of humane and ecologically sustainable design.
Raffi's invitation to co-edit Child Honouring: How To Turn This World Around has been a life changing event for me. Our work together has helped me to see that the health and integrity of America's children are systemically linked to the well-being of children the world over. His vision resonates deeply with my experiences, and beliefs as a developmental psychologist, clinician and mother. Some of our finest thinkers, scholars and policy makers contribute to this anthology, a book that is one piece of Raffi's much larger effort to launch a worldwide Child Honoring movement