Ep #77: The Power of Respect: Honoring Children as Individuals with Raffi

Hello my friends, I have a special treat for you today because I have Raffi on. Raffi has been described by the Washington Post as the most popular children’s entertainer in the English speaking world and he was an amazing human to talk to. In addition to his incredible five decade long career, Raffi has also started a global movement that honors children. As the best way to create sustainable peacemaking cultures, he has received the Order of Canada, the Order of BC, the UN Earth Achievement Award, and four honorary degrees.

When I asked Raffi what he wanted to talk about today, he said he wanted to talk about love and specifically respectful love. And it was just an incredible conversation. I think you’ll find it incredibly uplifting and helpful. He’s also going to share his nine principles of honoring children. It’s just a lovely conversation and something to inspire and lift you today. I hope you’ll enjoy it. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Raffi, it’s so good to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing this time with me today.

Raffi: My pleasure. Good to be here.

Amy: I’m so excited to talk to you. And when I asked you what you wanted to talk about and you just said, “Let’s talk about love.” And I just connected with that so much. I think it’s such a basis for everything that we do with children, for everything that we are trying to get children to do and the way that we reach them, the way that we teach them, all of those things. So, I’m so grateful that this is the message that you wanted to share.

And I want to just talk a little bit more about that and how you’re bringing that message to the world. I was looking at your foundation and can you tell me just a little bit about your foundation and the principles behind that.

Raffi: You may know that throughout my entire career, now in its fifth decade, respect has been the core value of everything that I do, respect for the child as a whole person. When you see young children as whole people, then how can you not acknowledge their dignity? How can you not enter into a respectful relation, a relationship with really very intelligent people that young children are. I’ve called them our most valuable players to use a sports metaphor, VIPs.

So, the Foundation for Child Honouring, the Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring, advances the idea of honoring children as a universal ethic to be lived in locally wise ways, worldwide, by respecting children, by honoring children. What we mean is valuing who they are. Valuing the abilities that they have, their creativity, their spontaneity, their joyfulness, their ingenuity. Children are amazing people and when we remember that, we respond differently to the various moments in our day when, as parents or caregivers or teachers, things get a little stressful.

But when we remember that children are doing their best and there’s always an opportunity to understand a child’s behavior then that’s a respectful way to be with children. So, my philosophy of child honoring began with a vision that I received in 1997 and woke me up from a sound sleep. And I knew that I was being gifted, a philosophy that was essentially a unique social change revolution. A child has the universal human at the heart of this vision because I like to say that it’s in early childhood that we can see most vividly how interconnected all the members of this human species worldwide are.

We are connected because we are alike. The six month old of every culture is the same physiological being regardless of color of skin, ethnicity, family, standing. It doesn’t matter the economic standing of the family. None of that matters. The six month old with a human heart beating, boom boom, boom boom is the same human heart the world over. That’s the glory of our interconnectedness. And I think Child Honouring acknowledges this hugely. We have nine child honoring principles, we can talk about them. But anyway, that’s a brief introduction to what Child Honouring is.

Amy: I love it. I think that one of the things that I’ve learned with my children, is that, I love how you spoke about respect, because what I feel is when I treat my children with respect, I can ask for respect back from them. And I’m modeling it for them and so they see it and this is their exposure to how you treat people because that’s how they’re being treated. And I feel it’s such a beautiful way to teach them respect by respecting them as a human, respecting their voice, respecting their opinions. And that doesn’t mean that I give them everything they want or do everything they say.

Raffi: I’m smiling here because I totally agree with you. You’re saying it’s so beautiful.

Amy: Yeah, and honoring them as our future as so now, I think our present.

Raffi: And as our presence, both.

Amy: Yes. Well, I feel you get to experience the world in such a more full way when you do it with a child.

Raffi: And you are moved to remember who you were as a child, what that felt like. To remember the vulnerabilities of being a child and then our compassion grows.

Amy: Yeah, that’s true. And I think their love, their genuine love of people and their hope. I think that children have a lot of hope which I think is really beautiful.

Raffi: They love life, everything is new, everything is fresh. This is one of the reasons I’ve said to parents for a long, long time in this digital era that we live in, because parents ask me for advice now and then. And they’ve asked me about social media and children and so on. I’ve said, “Keep your kids off social media as long as you can.” I said, “You will never regret holding off on giving your kids’ devices and so on. But you will regret giving them these digital devices that cost a lot of money, by the way, if you give them too soon.”

Because the critics of doing so, sum it up very nicely. Smartphones in the hands of children under 13, for example. It’s way too much, too fast, too soon. And a young child’s job is to learn about the real world. In fact, I even wrote a song called In The Real World, I think it’s on the Love Bug album. In the real world where the fish are jumping.

Amy: That sounds amazing.

Raffi: Check it out. Anyway, yeah, the point is, the job of a five year old for example or a seven year old or an eight year old is to feel the slow rhythms of a summer. To feel the rhythms of the seasons, to grow in wonderment of this magnificent planet that we share, the one that feeds us, sustains us. That’s the job of a child, about to learn the facsimile world of digital creations.

Amy: Yes. And I think, wasn’t that such a beautiful part of childhood? When I was young, I know my parents raised us without any technology. We didn’t even have a toaster and we had a refrigerator. We had a refrigerator. That was our big piece of electronics. But yeah, I mean, there were pieces of that that I am so grateful for because I did spend so much time outside in the dirt, and building and creating and exploring and doing all those things. And I think it’s been such a gift to me now.

It’s interesting in the world that we live in now as I have teenagers growing up. I have an adult child now and I have, all throughout teenage years and then upper elementary. And them seeing friends have phones and kind of starting to push for wanting those earlier and earlier. And I’m very much a wait on social media as well. So that’s been an interesting conversation to have. So, it’s fun to get to hear you talk about [crosstalk].

Raffi: I wrote a book about some of this and which I published in 2013 called Lightweb, Darkweb. The subtitle was Three Reasons to Reform Social Media Be4 It Reforms Us. Now there’s a new book by an author, John. I can’t remember his last name in the moment, but it’s called The Anxious Generation. Which, 10 years after my book came out, he’s coming out saying some of those same things. In other words, keep these devices away from children as long as possible.

It’s one thing to have a flip phone for communication but there’s no need for the rest of it till a child is emotionally old enough to understand some of the pitfalls and as well as the responsibilities that go with digital communication.

Amy: It’s been interesting as I’ve discussed it with my teenagers and just trying to give them some context for it and say, “I’m trying to be fair to you. And if I hand you this thing, this has more technology, more ability than the top scientists that NASA had a few decades ago. This is so much responsibility to give to you and that’s just not fair. So, what I have to do is do it over time.

We’re going to gradually help you transition into some of this stuff. And so, some of it, that’s not fair of me to give it all to you right now. It’s so much pressure on you. But we’ll build up to it and work towards it.”

So that’s kind of been the conversation I’ve had with them to kind of help them see why this is really a lot.

Raffi: Good, I respect that, Amy. Very good.

Amy: I would love to talk about the nine guiding principles that you have. And so, we talked a little bit about respect and love, which is principle number one.

Raffi: Respectful love, yes.

Amy: Yeah. Tell me.

Raffi: Respectful love because love can be coercive, it can be suffocating, it can be broad emotionally. Respectful love is a very different vibration from any of that. So that’s what we want, respectful love. Second principle is diversity. Diversity of ways of loving and diversity of families, biodiversity, of course. A diversity of ways of being human, of caring. Then we have caring community. What we all need to feel when growing up, that we live in caring communities. Conscious parenting is a very important principle.

When parents are conscious of their own upbringing, they’re not as likely to unwittingly pass on some of their childhood issues to their kids. Then we have emotional intelligence, which is huge in a young child’s life. Play, play as the basis of emotional learning is a huge part of that. And within emotional intelligence, there’s also learning self-regulation, regulation of emotions. Then we have non-violence, which is so important obviously. It’s the heart of any healthy family life in a good home is non-violence, but also in other sectors of our lives, in the workplace, in our schools.

And non-violence isn’t just the lack of using force with someone. It’s as Gandhi said in thought, word, and deed. So, we want to mean well, we want to hold people with respect. And all of this really in a way you can think of as calling for cultural respect. As cultural historian Riane Eisler put it, she said, “Humanity has a choice between domination and partnership.” That’s what we’re talking about is partnership. How do we live in loving partnerships?

So, then the last three principles are safe environments. We want to feel safe in all the environments that we’re in. Then sustainability is the second last one. And sustainability we think of living in a way now that allows future generations to live at least as well as we did. And of course, when we think of that, we think of climate change, which is a huge crisis for humanity. So, sustainability, that principle reminds us of future generations and our responsibility to the young who are with us now, that they have futures worth living, viable futures.

And the last principle is ethical commerce. Not only does that refer to fair trade, the world of commerce, but ethical commerce also is about showing up with our authenticity, our genuine selves, human commerce of meeting each other with love and respect and not wasting each other’s time.

Amy: Yes, I love it. I’m having thoughts too as we’re going. So, this has just been a delightful conversation so far. But when you’re talking about diversity, I love that you brought into it, this diversity of so many different kinds of diversity. So obviously, diversity in cultures and diversity in biodiversity. But I think too, this is something I started to practice with my kids years ago and we kind of have a quote in our home that says ‘whatever makes you weird makes you awesome’. And we did that just to kind of celebrate our differences and our uniqueness.

But it’s been so lovely as my kids have gotten older and they have their own unique different things and that it’s celebrated. It’s celebrated that we do our own thing and it doesn’t mean that we don’t want to be respectful of others, of course we do but we respect their right to be different too. And that it doesn’t make us less than, it’s what makes us who we are. And it’s just something to celebrate instead of feeling like we’re trying to have this pressure to fit in.

Raffi: Well, it would be kind of boring if we were all the same, wouldn’t it?

Amy: Yes, so much so.

Raffi: Yeah. I want to say one thing before I forget. For those of your listeners who are intrigued by the child honoring philosophy and maybe want to learn more, my foundation offers an online course in child honoring. It’s about 18 to 20 hours to take and it’s resource rich. And parents and educators who have taken the course, rave about it. They say it’s so comprehensive. We have a number of thought leaders in various sectors who echo the call for a child honoring world. We delve into the nine principles deeply and you come away from it feeling empowered to think of yourself as a change maker for all that you can do in life.

Amy: And we all have influence. I love that. That’s amazing.

Raffi: Yeah. So please go to raffifoundation.org and then click on the box that says take the course and you will see.

Amy: Love it. Amazing. And we’ll do a link for that down in the show notes too, so people can just find that really easily. Just a couple of other thoughts as we’re going through. I love you mentioned the caring community and I feel that this is something that’s so valuable. And I think, do you have advice for parents on helping their children become comfortable in their community and feeling like they can be a part of that? What do you recommend for that?

I feel helping children learn to feel safe and be able to communicate with people around their community is really valuable. How do you recommend parents do something like that?

Raffi: Well, I see parents in the grocery store that I go to and the child’s got a little grocery cart, helping the parent choose the foods they’re going to buy and take home and so on. So, you involve your children in your daily life. They get to experience the shopkeepers with you and see you interacting. All of that is a part of your child feeling part of the community. But the principle is really a call to adults to create the caring community in which our children can feel respected, part of the community and feel safe, of course. And hopefully my music, I want to talk about my music a little bit too with you.

Amy: Yes, let’s do it.

Raffi: Because I have a new album coming out. Hopefully my music is part of the caring community, feeling that children and families can have as the kids are growing up.

Amy: I love that. And I think those shared experiences, I know Brené Brown talks about those shared experiences and we sing together. And when we do things like that together, it can be such a bonding experience.

Raffi: So, I have an album coming out on April the 19th, it’s called Penny Penguin. And we’ve already released singles from it, three singles. One is called Penny Penguin, the title song, the second single was The Birdies Sing, and our third single is the old song B-I-N-G-O. But instead of bingo, the song is called Jimbo J-I-M-B-O. It’s about a dog named Jim. And there’s fun songs on this album. We even have a gospel song called Peace Like a River.

But what’s exciting is that for the very first time, I joined up with a lovely trio of singers from the Toronto area, three singers named or called Good Lovelies. They are good and they’re lovely. That’s their name, Good Lovelies. And they sing with me on 10 of the 14 songs. They sing beautifully and so far everyone who’s heard us just loves our sound together. So, I want to give them a shout out and say how thrilled I am that my album, Penny Penguin, features the Good Lovelies.

Amy: That’s so fantastic. Alright, and we will include the link to that in the show notes too, because that sounds really fun. And I want to go hear the Jambo, Jimbo, Jimbo song. Yeah, so fun.

Raffi: You’ve got to hear Penny Penguin first.

Amy: I want to hear that one. I love penguins. We’re penguin fans at our house. Well, that was so good. I guess I just want to ask you before we go, if there’s anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners about conscious parenting or about these principles of honoring children and just your message of respect and love. Respectful love. I love that phrase. Respectful love. Is there just anything else you would love to share?

Raffi: We could talk for hours.

Amy: I know.

Raffi: One little example of what’s part of the child honoring course, the online course, you’ll come across child development experts such as Gordon Neufeld, another Canadian who has gems like this one. When there’s behavior that often can be described as misbehavior, that’s not what we want to see. Rather than correct the behavior, he says, “First connect, then redirect.” Now think how beautiful that is.

Amy: Connect and redirect.

Raffi: Yeah, because a child may be stressed out in a particular moment and that’s why we’re seeing behavior that we’d rather not see. We want to intervene or direct the child this way or that. He says, first connect with the child, then redirect. And I love that because instead of the child then feeling somehow punished or being corrected right away. And in the middle of a moment that can feel for that child, he’s not in control of himself or she’s having a bad moment. We all have bad moments, but children need our love to learn the self-regulation.

Amy: I’ve heard children aren’t giving you a hard time, they’re having a hard time and I love that and using behavior is communication.

Raffi: There you go. That’s right. So then think about what Gordon Neufeld is saying, first direct, then redirect. I love that. And that’s just one example of what we do.

Amy: It’s beautiful. Yeah, I love it. It has been such a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you for joining me on the show and we’ll send people to your new album and can’t wait to hear it and thank you.

Raffi: Amy, thank you so much for taking the time with me. You’ve got quite the listenership out there, I understand. And I’m hoping that people who hear us today will check out raffifoundation.org, listen to my new album, Penny Penguin. And wish me well as I go on in my mid-70s to dream about new albums, more songs to write. I am writing another song, by the way, yeah, as we speak I’m all fired up.

Amy: I love it. It’s fantastic. Yeah. And go enjoy your view and your beautiful piano and write some more amazing songs and keep spreading your message around the world. I love it. We appreciate you. Thank you for what you do.

Raffi: Thank you so much. Thank you, lots of love, Amy. Thank you.

Amy: Thank you, you too.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.