What children are owed. The Rights Convention at 34.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child turned thirty-four on November 20th. It is one of the most widely ratified international treaties in history — adopted by every country in the world except the United States. I have been thinking about it this week in the context of what I do in the clinic: paediatrics is, at its core, an applied version of children's rights. The question 'what does this child need?' is a rights question.

The Convention establishes several categories of rights that I want to name here, because I think parents who know them specifically are better equipped than parents who know them abstractly.

Survival rights: food, shelter, healthcare, the basic conditions of being alive. These are the most obvious and the most unequally distributed across the world. In wealthy countries, most children have them. In many parts of the world, many children don't.

Development rights: education, play, the conditions necessary for the child to develop to their potential. Play is in the Convention. It is Article 31. Not as an aspiration — as a right. Children have the right to play.

Protection rights: from abuse, exploitation, violence, the specific vulnerabilities of childhood. These are the rights most frequently violated in both rich and poor countries — in different forms, but violated.

Participation rights: the right to a voice in decisions that affect the child's life, proportional to their age and capacity. This is the right that most surprises parents when I describe it. Many parents have not considered that a child has a right to be heard in family decisions.

Many parents have not considered that a child has a right to be heard in family decisions. The Convention established this in 1989. Most households have not yet caught up.

Many parents have not considered that a child has a right to be heard in family decisions. The Convention established this in 1989. Most households have not yet caught up.

Most households have not yet caught up.

I raise the participation right in particular because it is the one most often forgotten in families that are otherwise doing everything correctly. The right to be heard does not mean the right to decide — a ten-year-old does not have the right to determine where the family lives or what school they attend. But it does mean the right to have their view solicited, considered, and responded to.

In the clinic, I see many children who have no expectation that their view will be sought on things that affect them. This is not always because of neglect or bad parenting. It is often because parents simply haven't thought of it — because they were not heard as children, and the model they have is the model they received.

What the research shows, consistently, is that children who are regularly heard in family decisions — in age-appropriate ways, with genuine responses — develop significantly better executive function, self-regulation, and social skills than children who are not. Being heard is not just important for the child's feeling of dignity. It develops the cognitive structures that allow effective adult functioning.

The Convention is thirty-four years old. Many of the children born the year it was adopted now have children of their own. The rights it describes are not guaranteed by ratification — they are guaranteed by the daily practice of parents, teachers, clinicians, and systems. In my clinic, I try to practise them. On this anniversary, I want to recommend that you do too.

On this anniversary, I want to recommend that you practise the rights in your own household — not as a civic duty but as a daily one.

On this anniversary, I want to recommend that you practise the rights in your own household — not as a civic duty but as a daily one.

Not as a civic duty but as a daily one.

Does your child currently have a voice in the decisions that affect their daily life — what they eat, how they spend their time, how the household is organised?

And: when did you last ask your child what they thought about a family decision, and actually factor their response into the outcome?

What would it mean to take their participation right seriously for one week?

This week: one family decision that affects your child — even small: what to have for dinner, which film to watch, where to go on Saturday. Ask their view first. Consider it. Tell them what you decided and why, including if you decided differently from what they said. This is not democracy. This is participation.

The United States has not ratified the Convention. It has signed it. There are specific domestic legal reasons for this that are beyond the scope of this newsletter. What I note is that the country that most loudly talks about children is the one that has not made the formal commitment to their rights. This is a gap worth knowing about.

Names of people and brands in these editions are changed. Whoever was there and reads this knows what we are talking about.