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Every once in a while a blog post about \u2018childism\u2019 makes the rounds on social media, which is described as being a \u201cprejudice against young people\u201d that\u2019s on par with sexism, racism, and homophobia. But the Director of the Childism Institute, Dr. John Wall, argues that that definition implies children are simply victims of whatever adults throw at them - when actually they are active agents who create meaning for themselves.\n\n \n\nDr. Wall\u2019s most recent book is called Give Children The Vote - when I picked it up, I have to admit that I rolled my eyes. I was prepared to remain skeptical\u2026and was surprised to find that by the end of the book, the idea of children\u2019s suffrage actually made a whole lot of sense.\n\n \n\nChanging our minds\u2026changing the world\nA big part of what happened to me as I researched this episode was that I changed my ideas about two things I\u2019d long assumed to be true: that we need to protect children from adults who look down at them, and that children shouldn\u2019t be able to vote. As you\u2019ll hear in the episode, my daughter was actually part of this process on the voting topic - we talked about whether she thought she should be able to vote, and she demonstrated the major capabilities that Dr. Wall said children need to be able to vote responsibly.\n\n \n\nSo often we get stuck in a rut of imagining that the way we see the world is The Right Way, and if our child doesn\u2019t see it that way then it\u2019s because they aren\u2019t yet mature enough to know how the world really works. But what if we could see that the ways children view the world - in fact, the ways we used to view the world before we were taught that rational arguments supersede all other kinds of knowledge - as something that actually has value?\n\n \n\nNot only does it have value, but it might create insights into the challenges we face - from the small ones in our daily lives to the really big ones like what we\u2019ll do about climate change and how we\u2019ll address really big social problems.\n\n \n\nOur children need us to see and value their creativity, because there are so many other places in the world that don\u2019t value it - and that will squash it out of them pretty quickly.\n\n \n\nIf you\u2019d like to learn how to support your own child\u2019s intrinsic creativity and love of learning, I invite you to join me in the FREE You Are Your Child\u2019s Best Teacher masterclass.\xa0 \xa0Click the banner to learn more!\n\n\n\n\n \n\nDr. John Wall's Book\n

Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy (Affiliate link).