by Emily Cutts,  Director, G20 Youth Project

I’ve signed the Upstart petition for a kindergarten stage because children, young people and their families need us to build a world where they can flourish – which is in the communities where they live. They need us to do this. They need you too.

My wake-up call came in 2011. I was looking around my own community in Maryhill/North Kelvinside in Glasgow and saw the gaps widening; fewer support systems, fewer safe places for young people to go, the impact of inequality, fewer opportunities to grow. Children were suffering.

It felt like an emergency and I wanted to shout from the rooftops that children need our help and it cannot wait. Yet I felt we would be waiting forever if we are expecting someone else, such as council or government, to make the change. We need to be the change we want to see – and I believe it’s ever more urgent that we act for our children’s future.

Photo: Bruce Mars on Unsplash

Changing times, changing needs

Working for many years as psychology researcher at Carol Craig’s Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing in Glasgow, I learned that children cannot flourish unless we create the right environment for them to do so. Right now, in Scotland and across the world, that environment is under threat.

Over the past 40/50 years, childhood has been reshaped, not by children, but by societal choices. My time immersed in research at the Centre was inspirational – I came to see how deeply these changes have affected children’s mental and physical health and how this is backed up by the science. Since then, due to the rise of social media, online anxiety and disconnection from nature, those harms have been intensified even further. This isn’t simply unfortunate, it’s a public health crisis, it impacts all of us … and it is preventable and treatable.

Children today have lost so much of what previous generations took for granted and science shows us that these key aspects of childhood help children to thrive and are beneficial for everyone:

Safe spaces to play and belong

Healthy risk-taking through outdoor play and adventure

Youth clubs, community hubs and meaningful adult and community support

Access to green spaces, nature and time outdoors

Opportunities to contribute, explore and feel valued

Instead, many children face loneliness, anxiety, pressure to perform in a digital world that demands their attention and promotes materialistic values but doesn’t nourish their soul … and an adult world that doesn’t “have their back”

A national emergency

We must treat this as a national emergency, but with a long-term mindset. There is no quick fix. But we can start by looking at what works and the knowledge that children need us to be their champions…. to fight for their rights to for support and in being where they need to be, at a time when they need to be there.

I have been working to inspire and make changes at a local level in my community, beginning with the Children’s Wood in Maryhill, Glasgow, then the G20 Youth Project, and more recently Campsie Glen Woodland. I have been working always under the mantra “start where you are, do what you can, use what you have”, learned from the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.

Photo, Maria Thalassinou on Unsplash

What I have found is that once people can see the issue (e.g. children are lacking access to nature)  they are more likely to get behind the campaign (creating opportunities locally to access green spaces and outdoor play). Not only this, but people come up with creative and passionate solutions.

Real change requires years of commitment, investment and cultural shift. It means putting childhood at the heart of public health and policy and making it everyone’s problem. It means trusting in play, in nature, in human connection – the simple, powerful (and evidence-based) practices that allow children to grow into healthy, compassionate adults.

Children only get one childhood

This is why Upstart’s call to delay the school starting age and introduce a relationship-centred, play-based kindergarten stage for three- to seven-year-olds is so important because this simple change will reduce early stress and improve long-term outcomes for children and for society.

Children only get one childhood. Right now, they need us to be brave enough to protect it not with nostalgia, but with urgency, compassion, evidence of what works and action. It takes a village to do this, and it’s time to build that village together in the communities where children and families live.

Please sign the petition and pass on the link: https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2195