“Taking children seriously does not depend on being rich. Indeed many parents taking their children seriously choose less-well-paying work that they can do from home so that they can be with their children more.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
“I cannot afford the bus and ferry fares to the Outer Hebrides, never mind buying a scheduled plane ticket to Outer Mongolia to be with my daughter. Is Taking Children Seriously only for the rich?”
Certainly not! Taking children seriously does not depend on being rich. I myself was an extremely impecunious single parent family. Many parents taking their children seriously are currently very poor indeed. Indeed many parents taking their children seriously choose less-well-paying work that they can do from home so that they can be with their children more. They just have very different priorities from other people.
If I did not have the money in the bank, I would borrow it from a friend or relative and find a way of working it off or something. What a parent taking their children seriously would not do is to take the view that there is no way to solve the problem, or no way to get the money, and give up. Once you take that view, you make it highly unlikely that you will ever solve the problem. (Perhaps the solution to the problem might not involve you flying to Outer Mongolia at all. Or perhaps you have a friend who has always wanted to go there, whom your daughter likes a lot and would love to see instead of you? Or perhaps there is some other solution that would be better than anything I can think up in the abstract.)
For parents taking their children seriously, finding a way to solve such seemingly impossible-to-solve problems is all part of the fun. We can do hard things! Problems are soluble, and we can solve them! When your child wants to spend a considerable period in an expensive country on the other side of the world (as mine did!), and everyone tells you it is obviously impossible, and you nevertheless find a way to make it happen, it is exhilarating!
Whether the person with the wish is a child, a friend or (in one case!) a visiting teenager from Russia, instead of just dismissing the wish as impossible, my policy is to have fun finding a way. For example, I put the word out to everyone I know to see if anyone has any ideas. When an adult friend of mine wanted to meet his favourite authors, I asked around until I got their phone numbers, rang them out of the blue and invited them to dinner. One of the authors my friend wanted to meet flew in from America and stayed for several nights! In another case, a pianist composer friend of mine wanted to play a harpsichord that had been owned by his favourite Baroque composer and that was in a museum in Canada roped off and guarded by security guards. I talked to them, then to their boss, then to their boss’s boss, then finally to the director of the museum, explaining to her how much it would mean to my friend, who had flown all that way from The Netherlands to that end, and she said yes! (My friend was moved to tears!) Seemingly ‘impossible’ things are often possible if you try to find a way instead of just assuming that nothing can be done. You don’t need to be rich to make things happen for your beloved children. You just need to keep in mind that problems are soluble, and act accordingly.
See also:
- Dead Poets Society: a film review
- “At what age should children first leave the house on their own, visit their friend next door on their own, go to the cinema on their own, hitchhike from coast to coast on their own, etc.?”
- The Keeping-One’s-Options-Open mentality
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 2022, Taking Children Seriously FAQ: ‘“Is Taking Children Seriously only for the rich?”’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/is-taking-children-seriously-only-for-the-rich/