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Children's rights for adults
The right to have fun
Children’s rights are about fairness, responsibility and respect for and between all people – regardless of whether they are young or old.
Importantly, children’s rights are also about protecting children. They are about encouraging everyone, especially parents and carers, to help promote an environment where children can more safely and confidently learn about their world, and learn about what it means to be a fair, respectful and responsible person.
Talking about children’s rights can provoke some very different reactions in people. Some adults are all for children’s rights. Other adults believe children already have too many rights.
Negative views of children’s rights might develop for a whole lot of different reasons. Perhaps adults:
- feel that children don’t show respect for them anymore, and that children’s rights is part of the problem.
- feel it is hard enough to look after children without ‘big brother’ coming along and telling them how they should do it.
- don’t really understand what children’s rights are about.
The information on these pages is designed to encourage parents and carers to look at children’s rights in a different way and hopefully, to show that children’s rights are not there to justify children being rude or disrespectful. And they are not there to get in the way of good parenting.
