“Today was build yesterday; therefore, the young individual is our future and the foundation for tomorrow’s society.”
Situation / problem
Why are there dictators, murderers, addicts, delinquents, young school murders, frustrated, and unhappy people, and people who can’t reach their potential? While a newborn has so much potential to be happy, to reach his potential and to contribute with all his unique abilities to humanity.
“There seems no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn’t be (self-actualizing). Apparently every baby has possibilities for self-actualization, but most get it knocked out of them …I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.” Abraham Maslow
Solution
People are born with certain traits which they received form their parents genes. However, the way in which a person develops is partly the responsibility of its environment. The younger the child the more impact the environment has on the child. Those experiences become their “world view” with which they look on all further events happening throughout their life, it becomes their representation of the world. The sooner we provide the right conditions the better. There is always the possibility to reprogram our mind but this is much harder than having a good start in the first place. So it’s up too us the adults to provide as much as possible the right conditions so the child can develop in to a happy person.
Benefits
Giving children an optimal start in life is of the utmost importance to a good functioning human afterwards. Furthermore, today’s children are tomorrow’s society and the future of humanity. In which everyone will benefit; in the long run. It will be a cost saving: less prison costs, health care costs, welfare costs, and even war cost. While on the other hand gives more revenues: as they contribute as responsible individuals to their own development as well as to humanity as a whole, functioning adults pay taxes, provide a stable and peaceful society.
Actions
There are already a lot of findings and insights in all kinds of scientific and empiric disciplines. All this knowledge can help us to setup the right environment and conditions, and it’s up to us as adults to provide this in order to give children an optimal start in life.
Ultimately, my goal is to publish clear guidelines for the child’s environment (i.e. parents, teachers, child care takers…) on how to achieve this goal.