Raising Free People

“Kids seem to believe freedom is a human right. But our collective adult response is usually something like “no, no, honey, freedom is not something you’re born deserving, freedom is something that people must earn.” Freedom is not an inherent human right. This is our collective adult response to children.”

“So we want to raise trustworthy people, but our approach is to control children, their time and their tasks, effectively keeping them far away from the types of life experiences that help to build trust. Instead, we tend to trust young people based on their level of compliance to us.”

“Trusting children with their own learning and real decision making towards their own lives.”

“I realized something, deciding that an entire group of people is inherently untrustworthy until we “fix” them to be trustworthy is madness and it’s dangerous. It’s actually orienting us towards toxic and oppressive ideas about what is normal and what is healthy in our relationships.”

“We do these toxic and oppressive things not because we don’t love children and want the absolute best for them. We do it because we were taught that we were untrustworthy and so we haven’t quite developed the language and practice that roots our parenting and education in trust instead of fear.”