[EligibleDecoy]

“Why do adults demand respect from children when they don’t earn it?” - the author’s teen.

This is the crux of the conflict current society has with children. Children are used as political pawns (but think of the children!) rather than being a focus of society. Even here on HN you see some posters assume a 12 year old can’t understand right or wrong (12 year olds absolutely know when to lie, thus implying they think they know when some things are wrong).

If society respected children for who they are I think we could get a lot further. Thankfully it seems we are going that direction with the addition of more “free range” laws and general acceptance that children are people, with vastly more agency than society currently assumes they have.[1]

1 - source: has kids