Loving Every Child

Loving Every Child

Parenting
"The child is like a butterfly hovering above a raging torrent
of life. How to imbue her with toughness without encumbering her
lightness in flight; how to temper her without wetting her wings?"
It's a good thing I don't judge a book by its cover. When I
picked up a slim volume entitled Loving Every Child: Wisdom For
Parents (in which I later discovered the above quote) I envisioned
trite cliches with Hallmark card illustrations. A quote on the back
that it would change my life as a parent had me thinking, yeah,
right. Then I saw the name of the author: Janusz Korczak. That
changed everything.
Maybe a few of you have not heard of Janusz Korczak. Although
he was never a father, he devoted his life to children right up to the
end. A doctor and writer, for decades he ran a Jewish children's
orphanage in Poland. When he and his charges had to move to the
ghetto he spent his days tending to the children's physical and
psychic needs. He refused to let people save him from the Nazis.
"You wouldn't abandon your own child in sickness, misfortune, or
danger, would you? So how can I leave two hundred children now!". In
1942 he and his children died in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
Fortunately his words lived on. The truth is that today,
seventy years after his death, we so need to hear and reflect on them.
Korczak was an unwavering advocate for the rights of children.
Time spent as an Army doctor led him to observe, "Before a nation goes
to war it should stop to think of the innocent children who will be
injured, killed, or orphaned. No cause, no war is worth depriving
children of their natural right to happiness. One must think first of
the child before making revolutions." Or maybe before going after
nonexistent weapons of mass destruction?
When it came to parenting, he was well ahead of his time and our
time too for that matter. He would have the parent learn from the
individuality of each child. "When is the proper time for a child to
start walking? When she does? When should her teeth start cutting?
When they do...". He was critical of parents who would accept nothing
but the best in their offspring and those so preoccuppied with their
children's future success that they cannot be mindfully present with
them in moments that will never return.
Korczak was treating injured and dying soldiers during World War
I when he wrote Loving Every Child. Almost a century has passed since
then. But if you read this book (which I strongly recommend) you will
feel as though he was here in this time, speaking to your heartfelt
concerns.
On a personal note, I had to laugh when following paragraphs about
infant self discovery Korczak added,
"And in the future, she will have to find her place in society,
herself amidt humanity, and herself within the universe.
Well, well, now the hair has turned grey, but this work is still
not done."
As one whose hair is transitioning, I find myself thinking, that's for
sure!!!
A great big shout out goes out to all who preserved and translated
Korczak's words of wisdom so they are available to us today!
Julia Emily Hathaway




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