NAEYC Week of The Young Child 2025
In this time of national turmoil, it might benefit us all to consider the children. Let us collectively take leadership in asking this question on their behalf:
How can children feel valued and safe in our communities when:
Their families might lose medicaid assistance;
Their families or friends or neighbors could be yanked out of their homes, or schools, or workplaces and deported without due process?
Funding for their Head Start Program is threatened?
They or their friends and classmates’ funding for Special Education is wavering?
Their family is struggling to keep up with the price of groceries, gas, and rent?
They or their friends, neighbors, family members whose gender is non-binary, or whose skin is black or brown, or whose religion is not Christian, or whose parents are government workers, or whose beliefs dare to challenge the current administration are ALL being targeted – - don’t be who you are, don’t celebrate your history, don’t speak your mind, don’t step into your full self!
This is not the world we want for children. This leaves only a very small segment of our population feeling like they belong here. Don’t we want a world where every child feels happy and free to be themselves, to play, to worship, and to celebrate all of who they are?
As the great Ella Baker once stated: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest.”
By Katie Kissinger
