I always find the best things posted on the Trauma Flowers Facebook page. Today, it was this essay by Chelsea Stinson.
However, the piece that was missing for me was the link between ACES and children’s rights. As this is an American documentary, it did not surprise me that this was missing – children’s rights just aren’t part of the US discussion. In Scotland, we have the opportunity to make this link more explicit. In a segment of the film, primary school children are participating in an exercise called ‘Miss Kendra’s List’, where they hear the story of a woman who asks children how they are at the school gate and listens to their worries. Miss Kendra has a list outlining that children shouldn’t be hit or kicked, left alone for long periods of time, be neglected and go hungry, be bullied, be touched inappropriately, witness violence, etc. This is a brilliant drama exercise to help children explore their own experiences and related emotions. While I was watching it, it was like a siren going off in my head – “Children’s rights! Children’s rights! Children’s rights!”
Without even realising it, ‘Resilience’ is about children’s rights and how important it is for children and adults to know about them. Children adapt to their surroundings and they learn how to cope with trauma to protect themselves and simply stay alive. If they grow up in a home (or multiple homes) where abuse, neglect and/or other forms of trauma are common, then they have no frame of reference to know that there are other ways of living and that this shouldn’t be happening to them.
During one of my first projects with Children’s Parliament, I was working with a P6 class in the East End of Glasgow. The children were sharing stories about their community and what it was like to grow up there, witnessing knife crime, alcohol and drug abuse, football violence, etc. At the end of one day, a boy said to me “I didn’t know this wasn’t normal.” That moment has stuck with me. If children don’t know that they have a right to be healthy, happy and safe, how are they to know that things should be different for them?
If children don’t know that they have a right to be healthy, happy and safe, how are they to know that things should be different for them?
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