Creating a Compassionate Child
© 2001 Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
(An abridged version of this article first appeared in THE NEW TIMES magazine, September 2001.)

Jackie and baby Justin Forrest

Since the dawn of time, children have intuitively known that we are all a dynamic part of nature, participants in a wonderful web of life, not masters over it. They accept everything, talk to animals, and can find hours of fascination by staring at air.

Yet soon after being exposed to the elements of our culture and starting school, many modern children begin to develop callousness toward nature, losing the ability to feel connected to the natural world. What can we as parents do to keep the compassion alive in our children?

The feeling of being isolated from the natural world is reinforced by the focus on individuality that begins at an early age. The individual is considered the basic social unit of our society and we are taught to preserve our individuality at all costs. The taunting that is so common in school social circles can be attributed to this endless quest to protect ones individuality. What if we were taught from an early age to feel a part of the planet of our birth and to appreciate the interconnectedness of all living things?

So how can we bring up our children to be compassionate beings? Here are a few ideas.

Turn off the television
While the scientists and politicians argue about the affect of TV violence on our children, we as parents can draw our own conclusions from the vast amounts of data already collected.

For one thing, it has been clearly shown that our attitudes and beliefs have been affected by what we see on TV. In a classic study by Gerbner and Associates (as reported in "The Social Animal," by Elliot Aronson), they found that the attitudes and beliefs of people who watched more than 4 hours of television per day were dramatically affected. These viewers 1) expressed more racially prejudiced attitudes, 2) overestimated the number of people employed as lawyers, physicians, and athletes, 3) perceived woman as having more limited abilities and interests than men, 4) held exaggerated views about the prevalence of violence in society, and 5) believed that old people are fewer in number and less healthy today than they were 20 years ago, when actually, the opposite is true.

The rate of violent crime has not gone up significantly and, in fact, has gone down in some parts of the country in recent years. Yet television news reporting of violent crime has risen 700% since 1993.
Television and print media news teach our children to be satisfied with 30-second soundbites of information and to make global, far reaching conclusions after hearing only a few seconds about a situation. And, most damaging, they teach that after 30 seconds to a minute, the story is over and we don't have to concern ourselves with it any more.

Some television nature programs may do more harm than good. Nature is filled with varied cycles of life and many quiet moments. TV Nature programs, however, must be made exciting to attract viewers and they teach children that nature is a violent place where something is always eating something else. When we take children raised on TV nature programs out into the actual natural world, a world that does not have the exciting parts edited together, they often find it boring.

We turned off the TV when my son was born this year and it will stay off, except for occasionally watching some carefully selected educational programming. He will not be exposed to the mindless violence and commercials that fill every moment of TV viewing. Without senseless images of violence in his mind, he will be able to use his own intellect and imagination and seek stimulation at his own pace.

Practice Attachment Parenting

Be A Family, Whatever the Cost
This will seem like heresy to some in today's world, a world that prides itself on the importance of two income families who can make enough money to buy the biggest car and fanciest home. But no single act may be distancing our children more from a connection with the natural world and compassion more than the lengthy separation from parents that so many infants experience as they are dropped off daily in daycare situations.

Many parents focus on what they lost when a baby comes. Finding ways to "get back your life" influences so much of parenting these days, but this may be a trap. My new life does not feel at all like a sacrifice or that I lost anything. My new life is less about me and more about my new redefined family.

Drs. William and Martha Sears, in their classic book on what has become known as "attachment parenting," said "A need that is filled in infancy goes away; a need that is not filled never completely goes away but recurs later on in 'diseases of detachment' - aggression anger, distancing or withdrawal, and discipline problems."

Everyone's situation is different, to be sure, but we have decided that our son will not be put into any daycare environment. One of his parents will always be with him. We are changing our jobs and accepting less income, so that one of us is always home. This will make a big difference to him in developing a strong, confident image of himself, a being whose needs have been met and who will then have room in his heart for compassion for other creatures.

Take walks in nature regularly
Teaching children that all forms of life are part of a larger web of life and that no life form is better than another is very important. Getting children out into nature, even if it just to a patch of grass in the parking lot to observe the endless connections, can help develop a reverence for all life. If they feel a part of something larger and quite tangible, the need for the preservation of individuality at all cost lessens.

It is important to teach children that you don't have to study another being under a microscope in order to understand it. In fact, you don't really have to understand fully another creature at all, whether it is a spider or your classmate. It is great to know of other creatures, but we must find a way to teach our kids to let them be and to try to appreciate them for what they are. Science classes contribute to this problem that make students dissect animals or remove animals from the wild. Spend some time trying to get the kids to act out what it must mean to be a dog or a chicken or a spider. Our anthropocentric view of the universe has been responsible for much suffering.

Find a way to get the kids to retain some of what it means to be "wild." This does not mean misbehaving or being out of control. It means to stand in the forest with no assignment, no camera, no shovel and no agenda and just be there. It means to feel what it is like to rely on the Earth for life. This DOES NOT mean hunting or fishing as some have interpreted it to mean. It means just standing out in nature and appreciating it for what it is, not what it can give you.

We will take many hikes in nature with our son and he will be introduced from an early age to the wonders of life. He will see his dad pick up snails from the trail and move them so they won't get stepped on. He will explore tidepools and learn that you should look and not touch. He will hopefully learn that we are part of nature, not masters over it.

Food Choices Affect Everything
There is overwhelming evidence today that reducing the intake of animal protein in one's diet will greatly reduce the risk of many forms of cancer and heart disease that simply do not show up in cultures whose diets have little meat in them. The myth that we need large amounts of protein in our diets has been shattered. It is virtually impossible to have a protein deficient diet if one eats a variety of plant-based foods, beans rice, and potatoes.

With the vast number of non-meat, nutrition rich food choices we have, it may make little sense to base one's diet on meat any longer.

The impact on the Earth of a meat-based diet is large as well. It can take as much as 2,500 gallons of water and 10 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. Those 10 pounds of grain could make 10 loaves of bread. The contamination of our water supplies and the air pollution that results from the massive piles of manure from the cattle industry are poisoning children and adults all over the world.

Chickens packed in factory farms (courtesy Humane Farming Association)

How can one speak of creating a life based on compassion and heart if part of our diet includes meat from animals who have suffered so greatly, possibly transferring the energy of the horror and the fear of their slaughter they felt into the meat? Documented cases abound of animals in slaughterhouses suffering as they hang upside down, still conscious, being slaughtered alive.

Near death cow too week to walk to slaughter (courtesy Humane Farming Association)

Vegetarian (no meats or fish) and vegan (no animal products at all) diets can easily meet the needs of most children. Be sure to discuss any dietary changes with your health practitioner first, but many children have grown up on meatless diets.

Our son will eat a diet that is free of animal products, so his life will be a statement of peace and compassion from the very beginning.

Celebrate Seasonal Cycles
Whatever spirituality your family embraces, celebrating the seasons will foster a deep appreciation for the intimate role we play in the Earth's web of life.

For at least the last 12,000 years, people all over the world have celebrated the passage of time, the journey of the Earth around the Sun, in ways that have connected their lives to the life of our planet. How might our lives be changed and our environmental problems be helped if we took more time to recognize the seasons and the wisdom they bring?

Celebrating seasonal cycles with your children can foster a deep connection with the Earth, the source of all our strength, and provide a constant reminder of the web of life of which we are all a part. The celebration of seasonal cycles can be an easy and meaningful way to create the energy we all need for action.

On the Autumnal Equinox, the start of Fall, have a celebration with family, friends, or just yourself. Take a moment to appreciate the vitality of this season and to visualize the harvest all around you. Take a moment to be grateful for the
bounty you have received.

On the Winter Solstice, the first day of Winter, reflect with your family on the darkness ahead, a time to rest, a time when much in nature dies so that new life can grow. On the first day of Spring, the Vernal Equinox, celebrate the new growth in your garden and in your lives. Celebrate summer on the Summer Solstice and rejoice in the abundance of life.

Help your children be aware that we share this Earth and that every action we take effects her and everyone and everything on the planet. Once these things are noticed, they cannot be forgotten - and you will never be the same.

Our son will have a rich spiritual life in society and in nature.

Carefully Choose Schools
Most people in the West are still educated in a public education system that was not designed to foster a reverence for life and an appreciation of the power that a deep connection with the natural world can bring. Our public schools are still designed after the model developed early in our nation's history, when the goal was to turn farmers into productive factory workers.

John Taylor Gatto, a former New York Teacher of the Year and current educational reform activist, said in his book Dumbing Us Down in 1992, that he left elementary education because he was mandated by the system to teach children lessons he never intended to teach. These lessons, he says, create young people who are

"indifferent to the adult world and to the future, indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence. Rich or poor, school children who face the twenty-first century cannot concentrate on anything for very long; they have a poor sense of time past and time to come. They are mistrustful of intimacy (for we have divorced them from significant parental attention); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction."

These words reverberate in my own mind as I reflect on my own schooling. I learned, as Gatto says he was encouraged to teach, confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, and that I am constantly under surveillance. Sadly, these traits are embraced by our society where our political and corporate leaders want a school system that is, says Gatto, "an essential support system for a model of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control."

Environmental educator David Orr sums up the problem, claiming that "education in our modern world was designed to further the conquest of nature and the industrialization of the planet." He says that education today must be "designed to heal, connect, liberate, empower, create, and celebrate." Education, and science education in particular, must be life centered, not person centered. This is our challenge.

We teach children that control comes from the top of our society from governments and large corporations in the form of laws, policies, and technological advances. In this model, the citizenry are passive, waiting for solutions to be handed to them by those that are assigned the job of taking care of them. We become separated from our heart and lose touch with our common sense. Fears take the place of reasoned responses and tension builds in the psyche as the choices are made by those assigned the caretaking duty make less and less sense to us. We give away our power and become dependent upon faceless entities with whom we have no contact.

We hope to find a school for our son that empowers him, teaches him to celebrate the natural world, and does not teach disconnection as a way of life.

Surround with Love
The most important element to create a compassionate child is to surround him or her in love, every minute of every day. That alone should make a big difference.

We know that many animals and plants are in danger of extinction. We have an Endangered Species List to track their decline. Maybe we need an Endangered Values List as well, where we put ethics like reverence for life, the sacredness of the Earth, the air, and the water, and the acknowledgment that we are all part of the web of life. Then we could work to reestablish the endangered values, restoring spiritual and psychic health to a people badly in need of healing.

[Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and educator in Seattle. His new book, Healing Our World: A journey from the darkness into the light, will be available this Fall. He maintains a website of his writings at www.healingourworld.com and can be contacted at jackie@healingourworld.com.]

Resources on the Web

Turn off the TV

1. TV Turnoff Network, <http://www.tvturnoff.org/>
2. "Un-TV" Guide, <http://www.sover.net/~gmws/untv/>
3. National Institute on Media and the Family, <http://www.mediaandthefamily.org/>

1. Shift over to a meatless diet with the help of Earthsave at http://earthsave.org/mission.htm
2. See a thorough discussion of reasons used worldwide for shifting to meatless diets at http://www.essene.com/Essene%20Teachings/Vegetarian.html
3. Learn how to switch to compassionate nutrition from the McDougall Wellness Center at http://www.drmcdougall.com/

1. John Taylor Gatto, <http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html>
2. See the staggering connection betwen animal cruelty and human violence at <http://www.cfhs.ca/Programs/HumaneEducation/ViolenceLink/ccbackgrounder4.htm>
3. Understand more about the corporate takeover of education through subsidized curricula from Corporate Watch's "Commercialization in the Classroom" web site at <http://www.igc.org/trac/feature/education/commercial/index.html>

Jackie will give a workshop at the Seattle Holistic Center on October 2 and 9, 2001 called "Our Challenged Environment: Protecting the Infant, Child, and Young Adult." Call (206) 525-9035 to register.