Children Webmag - Editorial

Whenever a child arrives, everyone else has to adjust. The child is unaware of these changes, but they affect the environment in which he or she is brought up. There is another mouth to feed at a time when the extra demands may mean that a parent has to change, reduce or even give up work, with a reduction in income. For an older sibling, it may be a chance to learn about babies and parenting skills. For the next youngest in a larger family, it may mean coming to terms with loss of attention, being no longer the youngest. All of these changes may have life-time implications for the experiences, skills and feelings of those affected.

There are new parents, learning a very demanding role, and in the small nuclear families of the developed countries, often without having observed parenting at first hand themselves. There are people in middle age who find themselves labelled grandparents for the first time and who face the delicate task of supporting their children as they learn to be parents while allowing them the space to do it their way.
There are all the complexities of relationships to live with in families where the parents bring children from former partners.

Similarly, as succeeding generations of children join the wider community, so it has to adjust to their arrival. There are new patterns of behaviour. Ten years ago, who would have thought of the impact of mobile phones on children’s safety, communication patterns, bullying and theft? Or of the effect of driving children to school and their sedentary use of computers on childhood obesity? There are continual new challenges and a never-ending need for new ideas and solutions. Every generation experiences terrible twos, its school pressures, and its rebellious teenagers. The issues may be never-ending, but they demand continual re-assessment, and new answers.

FICE’s Congress in Glasgow in September on Creating a Place for Children promises to offer a good chance to share new ideas with delegates from around the world. About ninety people have submitted proposals for workshops, from countries in every continent, and with a very wide range of subject matter. If you have an interest in the way children’s needs are met best, you will be able to learn from a host of other counties by participating.

Creating a Place for Children is intentionally a broad theme, including architectural space, a role for children in the wider community, emotional space, and services for children who have to live away from home in residential care, foster care or on the street. There should be something for everyone.

It is the responsibility of adults to create the place for children and offer them opportunities, but children are people in their own right, and they have both the right and responsibility to respond to the opportunities on offer, to make choices and to act. In turn it will be their role to act as adults and offer their children opportunities.

True to this model, the FICE Congress is running a parallel Conference for young people, offering them opportunities to share ideas, have new experiences as a group and put over their ideas to the childcare profession, as represented at the Congress.

Anyone interested in attending either the FICE Congress or the young people’s Conference should look at the website. The young people’s Conference will be heavily subsidised, thanks to sponsorship. If you’ve never been to a Congress or Conference before, try this one. We look forward to seeing you there.

click here for the Congress Web site