Yet soon after being exposed to the elements of our culture and starting school, many modern children begin to develop callousness toward nature, losing the ability to feel connected to the natural world. What can we as parents do to keep the compassion alive in our children? The feeling of being isolated from the natural world is reinforced by the focus on individuality that begins at an early age. The individual is considered the basic social unit of our society, and we are taught to preserve our individuality at all costs. The taunting that is so common in school social circles can be attributed to this endless quest to protect one’s individuality. What if we were taught from an early age to feel a part of the planet of our birth and to appreciate the interconnectedness of all living things? Here are a few ideas for raising children to be compassionate beings: While scientists and politicians argue about the effect of TV violence on our children, we as parents can draw our own conclusions from the vast amounts of data already collected. For one thing, it has been clearly shown that attitudes and beliefs are affected by what we see on TV. In a classic study by Gerbner and Associates (as reported in The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson), they found that the attitudes and beliefs of people who watched more than four hours of television per day were dramatically affected. These viewers 1) expressed more racially prejudiced attitudes; 2) overestimated the number of people employed as lawyers, physicians, and athletes; 3) perceived women as having more limited abilities and interests than men; 4) held exaggerated views about the prevalence of violence in society; and 5) believed that old people are fewer in number and less healthy today than they were twenty years ago, when the opposite is actually true. The rate of violent crime has not gone up significantly and, in fact, has gone down in some parts of the country in recent years. Yet television news reporting of violent crime has risen 700% since 1993. Television and print media news teach our children to be satisfied with thirty-second sound bites of information and to make global, far-reaching conclusions after hearing only a few seconds of information about a situation. Most damaging, they teach that after thirty seconds to a minute, the story is over and we don’t have to concern ourselves with it any more. Some television nature programs may do more harm than good. Nature is filled with varied cycles of life and many quiet moments. Television nature programs, however, must be made exciting to attract viewers, and they teach children that nature is a violent place where something is always eating something else. When we take children raised on TV nature programs out into the actual natural world, a world that does not have the exciting parts edited together, they often find it boring. We turned off the TV when my son was born this year, and it will stay off, except for occasional and carefully selected educational programming. He will not be exposed to the mindless violence and commercials that fill every moment of TV broadcasting. Without senseless images of violence in his mind, he will be able to use his own intellect and imagination and seek stimulation at his own pace. This will seem like heresy to some in today's world, a world that prides itself on the importance of two-income families who can make enough money to buy the biggest car and fanciest home. But no single act may distance our children more from a connection with the natural world and compassion than the lengthy separation from parents that so many infants experience as they are dropped off daily in daycare situations. Many parents focus on what they lose when a baby comes. Finding ways to "get back your life" influences much of parenting these days, but this may be a trap. My new life does not feel at all like a sacrifice or that I lost anything. My new life is less about me and more about my newly redefined family. Drs. William and Martha Sears, in their classic book on what has become known as "attachment parenting," said, "A need that is filled in infancy goes away; a need that is not filled never completely goes away but recurs later on in 'diseases of detachment': aggression, anger, distancing or withdrawal, and discipline problems." Everyone's situation is different, to be sure, but we have decided that our son will not be put into any daycare environment. One of his parents will always be with him. We are changing our jobs and accepting less income so that one of us is always home. This will make a big difference to him in developing a strong, confident image of himself as a being whose needs have been met and who will then have room in his heart for compassion for other creatures. Teaching children that all forms of life are part of a larger web of life and that no life form is better than another is very important. Getting children out into nature, even if it just to a patch of grass in the parking lot to observe the endless connections, can help develop a reverence for all life. If they feel a part of something larger and quite tangible, the need for the preservation of individuality at all cost lessens. It is important to teach children that you don't have to study another being under a microscope in order to understand it. In fact, you don't really have to understand fully another creature at all, whether it is a spider or your classmate. It is great to know of other creatures, but we must find a way to teach our kids to let them be and to try to appreciate them for what they are. We will take many hikes in nature with our son, and he will be introduced from an early age to the wonders of life. He will see his dad pick up snails from the trail and move them so they won’t get stepped on. He will explore tide pools and learn that you should look and not touch. He will hopefully learn that we are part of nature, not masters over it. There is overwhelming evidence today that reducing the intake of animal protein in one’s diet will greatly reduce the risk of many forms of cancer and heart disease that simply do not show up in cultures whose diets have little meat in them. The myth that we need large amounts of protein in our diets has been shattered. It is virtually impossible to have a protein-deficient diet if one eats a variety of plant-based foods, beans, rice, and potatoes. With the vast number of non-meat, nutrition-rich food choices we have, it may make little sense to base one’s diet on meat any longer. The impact on the earth of a meat-based diet is large as well. It can take as much as 2,500 gallons of water and ten pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. Those ten pounds of grain could make ten loaves of bread. The contamination of our water supplies and the air pollution that results from the massive piles of manure from the cattle industry are poisoning children and adults all over the world. How can one speak of creating a life based on compassion and heart if part of our diet includes meat from animals who have suffered so greatly, possibly transferring the energy of the horror and the fear of their slaughter into the meat? Documented cases abound of animals in slaughterhouses suffering as they hang upside down, still conscious, being slaughtered alive. Vegetarian (no meats or fish) and vegan (no animal products at all) diets can easily meet the needs of most children. Be sure to discuss any dietary changes with your health practitioner first, but many children have grown up on meatless diets. Our son will eat a diet that is free of animal products, so his life will be a statement of peace and compassion from the very beginning. Most people in the West are still educated in a public education system that was not designed to foster a reverence for life and an appreciation of the power that a deep connection with the natural world can bring. Our public schools are still designed after the model developed early in our nation's history, when the goal was to turn farmers into productive factory workers. John Taylor Gatto, a former New York Teacher of the Year and current educational reform activist, said in his 1992 book Dumbing Us Down that he left elementary education because he was mandated by the system to teach children lessons he never intended to teach. These lessons, he says, create young people who are indifferent to the adult world and to the future, indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence. Rich or poor, schoolchildren who face the 21st century cannot concentrate on anything for very long; they have a poor sense of time past and time to come. They are mistrustful of intimacy, for we have divorced them from significant parental attention; they hate solitude; and are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, and/or timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction. We hope to find a school for our son that empowers him, teaches him to celebrate the natural world, and does not teach disconnection as a way of life. The most important element in creating a compassionate child is to surround him or her in love, every minute of every day. That alone should make a big difference. We know that many animals and plants are in danger of extinction. We have an endangered species list to track their decline. Maybe we need an endangered values list as well, where we put ethics like reverence for life; the sacredness of the earth, the air, and the water; and the acknowledgment that we are all part of the web of life. Then we could work to reestablish the endangered values, restoring spiritual and psychic health to a people badly in need of healing. TV Turnoff Network, <http://www.tvturnoff.org/> "Un-TV" Guide, <http://www.sover.net/~gmws/untv/> National Institute on Media and the Family, <http://www.mediaandthefamily.org/> EarthSave, <http://earthsave.org/mission.htm> Why Be a Vegetarian? <http://www.essene.com/Essene%20Teachings/Vegetarian.html> The McDougall Wellness Center, <http://www.drmcdougall.com/> John Taylor Gatto, <http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html> Linking Animal Cruelty to Human Violence, <http://www.cfhs.ca/Programs/HumaneEducation/ViolenceLink/ccbackgrounder4.htm> Commercialization in the Classroom, <http://www.igc.org/trac/feature/education/commercial/index.html> Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D., is a writer and educator. His new book, Healing Our World: A Journey from the Darkness into the Light, will be available this fall. Visit <http://www.healingourworld.com/> or write <jackie@healingourworld.com>. Jackie will give a workshop at the Seattle Holistic Center in October, "Our Challenged Environment: Protecting the Infant, Child, and Young Adult." Call (206) 525-9035 for details. |
Since the dawn of time, children have intuitively known that we are all a dynamic part of nature, participants in a wonderful web of life, not masters over it. They accept everything, talk to animals, and can find hours of fascination by staring at air.