Teach me how to watch and talk
so that I may speak my mind,
show me where it’s safe to walk
till the time that I will find
my own way with watchful eye:
take my hand and let me fly!

And I’ll take you up with me
to the sky, and while we soar
high above the world, you’ll see
things you’ve never seen before
as the clouds are rolling by:
take my hand and let me fly!

Nobody knows a flower's fashion,
can tell a blossom by the root;
we only get a vague impression
as soon as we can see the shoot.

Cast a warm summer with some showers,
and every little plant will thrive:
roots will bring forth all kinds of flowers,
and children are the roots of life!

When you've grown up, I'm hopeful that you may
stand up for both yourself and others, but
for now you'll do exactly as I say
without demur and keep your mouth well shut.

There's a maker in the making
where the mind develops free,
there's a taker for the taking
where the child is property.

Individual expression
is a right and, if suppressed,
children's minds endure regression
at society's behest.

Born with their perfect self, each child develops
their own identity and their own ways;
most parents disapprove and therefore pressure
them to become the child they want to raise.

Some parents find their child is more defensive
regarding their identity, that's why
it can be difficult to break their spirit
and force them to conform and to comply.

They feel the need to trim the perfect flower
to demonstrate it isn't growing wild:
children do not rebel against their parents,
but parents will rebel against their child.

(Social Conditioning)

Lisa looks out of the window of her dimly lit surroundings,
watching passing birds and butterflies and fluffy clouds that spread
all across the sky; she listens to the larks' and robins' music,
wishing she could spend this sunny morning in the park instead.
Here a sombre voice reiterates the story of somebody
who was mercilessly killed because of Lisa's ceaseless flood
of transgressions, failures and depravities, and she will later
eat and drink what she is told to be the victim's flesh and blood.

In her classroom she is taught white Christians brought civilisation
to all other countries on a holy quest to save the world;
she will never hear about the hundreds of millions who were slaughtered
by white Christians ruthlessly determined to enslave the world.
She may learn about civilisations that had once existed
or exist today as superstitions that she should resent;
Lisa will believe their culture is the only one that's valid
and internalise the Abrahamic sense of entitlement.

Lisa loves rewards, so she's compliant, and she's only learning
what she's told to learn, neglecting other subjects that could be
interesting or beneficial. She's aware the most important
mission in one's life is pleasing people in authority.
Lisa learns by rote; she may not grasp the facts, but repetition
is sufficient for a pass. Throughout her childhood and her youth
she'll repeat and be exposed to repetitions while believing
anything that is repeated frequently must be the truth.

Lisa loves her waist-long hair, but suddenly she asks her mother
for a haircut, and her mother tells her disappointedly,
'But you used to love your hair.' - 'I did, but all the girls around me
wear short hair these days, and I don't want them to make fun of me.'
She excels at maths and physics and, encouraged by her teachers,
Lisa proudly tells her parents, 'I'll become an engineer
and build roads and bridges,' but her realistic parents answer,
'Don't be silly!' and prepare her for a clerical career.

Lisa has a normal childhood, but what's being normalised
isn't always healthy, and each normal child is traumatised.

When Jean Pierre and Jonathan were children playing in the park,
they admired the many flowers and began to learn about
them by reading up on names and facts, determined to embark
on careers that'd suit their interest with no shadow of a doubt.

'I'll become a florist!' When Jean Pierre announced his formal choice
of career, he looked just like the planet's most decisive child.
'I don't want to be an astronaut like all the other boys.' -
'Anything you want to be is fine with us,' his parents smiled.

'I'll become a florist!' Jonathan informed his parents; his
father told him, 'Don’t be silly! A respected family
such as ours won't ever deal with childish fantasies like this!
You will study and become a proper businessman like me.'

All the flowers in their garden were uprooted to prevent
any manner of distraction, even bushes, herbs and weed,
and the fleeting moments of his childhood and his youth were spent
studying what didn't interest him in order to succeed.

Jonathan was regularly, oftentimes unwillingly,
dragged to functions where his father, telling him to sink or swim,
showed him off to raise his standing in his prim community,
stressing all the sacrifices that his parents made for him.

While Jean Pierre is now the leading florist in his hometown where
he enjoys a walk or taking his canoe across the lake
once his working day is finished, Jonathan just has no spare
time between his business meetings and at night oft lies awake.

Eager to acquire more money than he has already, he
shows potential business partners his awards upon the shelf
as Jean Pierre does what he always wanted and lives happily;
Jonathan became successful while Jean Pierre remained himself.

You do not learn by asking questions,
experimenting or by thought
but by repeating what we teach you,
for that's how we ourselves were taught.
Once you have mastered repetition,
you may, by accolades beguiled,
exchange a value for a token
for being a compliant child.

Behave and act as we instruct you,
though this may come at the expense
of your convictions, feelings, comfort,
your needs or even common sense.
Once you've adapted your behaviour,
you may, by accolades beguiled,
exchange a value for a token
for being a compliant child.

Accept the world as we describe it,
regardless of the world you see:
replace your individual judgment
with the urge to please authority.
Once you've internalised our worldview,
you may, by accolades beguiled,
exchange a value for a token
for being a compliant child.

Please mummy, daddy, do not trespass
on my identity
because I am the only person
that I desire to be.

Just keep in mind that I am human,
a child and not a lamb,
so do not tell me who I should be,
love me for who I am.

I have a brain and I can use it;
don’t take that skill away,
don’t tell me what I should believe in
and what to think or say.

Don’t force me into obeying every
grown-up without ado
or doing things the way you do them
if mine is working, too.

Don’t tell me to ignore my feelings
or mock them; they are real,
and though you mightn’t understand them,
they are the way I feel.

Please mummy, daddy, do not trespass
on my identity,
just love, encourage and respect me
and let myself be me.

On Mother's Day and Father's Day
you put us children on the spot -
we have to bring you gifts and say
we're grateful to you in every way,
whether you earned our thanks or not.

Would it not be the proper thing
to hold a Children's Day as well,
to thank us for the joy we bring
into your lives, the songs we sing,
the smiles we smile, the tales we tell?

We don't want much: an afternoon
spent at the venue of our choice,
a handmade present and a tune,
a cake and maybe a balloon -
a day on which we have a voice!

A lot of struggle and of strife
have brought you where you are today;
your kids deserve a better life
than you have had, that's what you say.

You want them to get As and Bs,
lined up like trophies on a shelf,
and all the opportunities
that you have never had yourself.

Their future starts right in the pram,
that's the unquestionable truth,
so if you want what's best for them,
give them a childhood and a youth!

We boredly watch your thighs and shopping bags
as you meet friends and neighbours on the street
and stop to chat while we’re supposed to stand
still and do nothing else than looking neat.

We try to get a glimpse of goings-on
around us from between your legs or stare
at handbags or the sky while you commence
to talk about us as if we weren’t there.

After you’ve waffled on for what appears
like hours to us, we sometimes pull your wrist,
your dress or coat to get away or just
to figure out whether we still exist.

When the ordeal at last is over, we
are quite relieved that finally we can go,
and as we trot beside you we’re afraid
you may bump into someone else you know.

Divided according to colour and size,
the violets rest in rectangular beds,
the neatly trimmed holly won many a prize,
beside the straight path marigolds lift their heads,
the rose bushes grow in an accurate line
which by butterflies largely is spurned,
the hedge shows that garden and flowers are mine:
we need to see beauty interned!

Flamingoes pace up and pace down with clipped wings,
the stupefied tiger won't move in his cell,
the nightingale, chained to the perch, never sings,
the tortoise retracts in its keratin shell,
the gibbon hangs down from a bar on one leg,
then grabs all the nuts he has earned
and longs for the days he did not have to beg:
we need to see beauty interned!

We silence their laughter and sneer at their grace,
we're holding their hands and we never let go,
we show them their limits, constricting their space:
Do this, Don't do that and Don't think till you grow!
We're forcing our children who yearn to be free
to study the things we have learned
and become what we always desired to be:
we need to see beauty interned!

‘My kids respect me!’ How I cringe
whene’er I hear that phrase;
respect is mutual, otherwise
the term is out of place.

Respect can’t be a one-way street,
I’ll have to make it clear
that unilateral respect
is commonly called fear.

When a child is born, they bring a perfect
individual identity
and consider everyone an equal
individual, quite naturally;
they embrace whoever may be different
from themselves, their parents and their kind,
for diversity is stimulating
to the curious and open mind.

But society keeps pushing children
into its collective identities
such as nationality, religion,
culture, race and class, presenting these
as superior to others, teaching
to avoid, belittle or condemn.
While it's fostering a sense of us,
it is fostering a sense of them.

Yet there always will be stubborn children
who resist, to various degrees,
this deindividuation process,
individual personalities
who will not be mainstreamed. Their potential,
mental health and happiness rely
largely on environment and parents
and the parenting approach they try.

Such a child with liberal gentle parents
who, supportive, helpful and aware,
cherish individual expression
will be thriving freely in their care.
Yet the same child with strict conservative parents
trying to mould them for their groups will be
facing constant struggles to hold on to
their detested personality.

In the latter case the children's actions
as a rule will be pathologised,
and attempts are made to break these children
to become compliant and standardised.
They are forced to suppress their own behaviours
and to copy others to obtain
their acceptance, losing their potential
and wellbeing which they won't regain.

Sometimes they're successfully broken, trying
hard to please and grow a thicker skin,
to fulfil society's expectations,
do as others do and to fit in.
Some, though, will defend their way of being,
sometimes viciously like a cornered cat,
others mentally retire from a world
not accepting who they are; that's that.

If your little child is a resister,
celebrate them for the child they are
and don't listen to the voices telling
you to fix them like a damaged car.
We weren't born to shut up, fit in and follow,
rotting on society's grey shelves;
we resist deindividuation
since we much prefer to be ourselves.

Often, in town and in the park,
in restaurants, in pubs and cafés,
we hear a baby's joyful shout
that means: It's great to be alive!

Not worrying about the future,
not knowing any petty problems,
bursting with life, the little baby
has every reason to rejoice.

And so the adults try to hush them:
Don't be a nuisance! Stop that noise!
Be quiet now, and don't annoy
the others with your happiness.

I have walked on the bridges of Venice,
I have seen an eagle take wing,
I have sailed on the rivers of Hamburg
and climbed Sligo's mountains in spring,
I have seen the colours of India
and tigers who live in the wild,
but nothing compares to the beauty
of the eyes of a happy child.

I was sixteen when I was leaving school
and wanted to become a childcare worker;
my parents' plans for me were more ambitious,
and so I studied, but I didn't finish,
and then I studied something else and failed.
An unskilled job, a year on social welfare,
and finally I pulled myself together:
at twice sixteen I was a childcare worker.

I was sixteen, aspiring to be a writer,
and started novels, stories and the like;
my parents smiled and said it was all right
as long as I would not neglect my studies
in favour of my hobby - so I wrote,
wrote something else and something else again,
and never got a story finished. Then,
at twice sixteen, I pulled myself together,
and I became the poet that I am.

You may be able to delay their future,
you even may be able to enforce
their apathetic service for a lifetime,
but you will never manage to transfigure
your kids' identity with your ideas.

If ever I have children of my own,
and they decide that they'd become designers,
rock stars or presidents or astronauts,
I know for sure that I'll encourage them.

Childhood presents no second chances -
the children learn, as years pass by,
what parents teach them, and their childhood
remains unaltered till they die.
Who'll heal the children who by rulebooks
rather than interest are beguiled?
What is the value of a childhood
and of the future of the child?

Think hard before you have them branded
by your own owner; try to see
that any dogma or religion
replaces their identity.
Think of the many brilliant spirits
indoctrination has defiled:
What is the value of a childhood
and of the future of the child?

How blessed is the child who grows up without guilt,
who's not taught they were born in sin
and worthless without the blood that was spilt
by a god who is trying to win.

How blessed is the child who grows up without fear
of invisible creatures who trail
them all day and provide many rules that aren't clear
and a hell for the people who fail.

How blessed is the child who grows up without hate,
who's not taught there's a god who dislikes
certain races, beliefs, all who tolerate
science, atheists, faggots and dykes.

How blessed is the child who grows up without pew,
a child whose own parents were freed:
if only all children were blessed like these few,
the world would be blessed indeed.

The daunting concrete building by the roadside
keeps swallowing its victims eagerly;
all parents have to come here, sacrificing
their little children to society.

As families approach the monstrous structure,
the guileless child, with an excited face,
may try to pick wild flowers from the footpath
but soon is pulled away to learn their place.

The child is dragged across the gaping archway
whose massive pillars that obscure the sky
are marked, one with conformitas and one with
obsequium in letters ten foot high.

Inside the individual child is mainstreamed
to function as desired and never shrink,
their drive and creativity discouraged,
and adults teach them how and what to think.

Stifling their curiosity and candour,
rewards and punishments are used to raise
dependence on external motivators
like gold stars, extra playtime, grades and praise.

Identifying with their institution,
most children will conform and will comply
while rebels are severely reprimanded
for any question that begins with why.

Eventually the children who were firmly
dragged into this grey barracks of dismay
march out as workers, soldiers, priests and housewives
and trample on the flowers in their way.

At the weekend the family goes to the lake
with their lunch boxes, soft drinks and snacks,
and the children spread out to play at the beach,
and the adults sit down and relax.

You wish you were either but know you are neither:
you're invisible through and through,
and the ones most unlikely to understand
are the ones in the same boat as you.