Children, as any parent knows, are not small adults. Their brains are growing and being acutely shaped by their environment and experiences. Social skills and values are learnt from those around them, with teamwork, risk-management, personal boundaries, and tolerance being learned through play with other children. Their immune system is imprinting environmental contact into a set of responses that will shape health in later life. Their bodies grow physically and become adept at physical skills. They learn both trust and mistrust through interaction with adults.
This rapid physical and psychological growth makes children highly vulnerable to harm. Withdrawal of close contact with trusted adults and enforced distancing has large emotional and physical effects, in common with other primates. Lack of experience also leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by adults who are pushing certain attitudes or beliefs—often called “grooming.” For these reasons, our forebears put specific protections and norms of behaviour in place that elevated the needs of children above adults. -- More...
The Epoch Times: “A Fresh Look at Our Changing World”
The Epoch Times is a privately held news media company. The center is in New York, but our network of local reporters throughout the world uncovers stories that are authentically local, yet also globally relevant. Our independence enables us to report widely and present a diversity of opinions.
We have offices in 30 countries across five continents, and our content is published in 17 languages. We are proud to offer print and web editions in Chinese, English, German, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian, as well as web versions in Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Vietnamese and Swedish.
