In the year 1212, a crusade of more than 30,000 Christian children led by 12-year-old Stephen of Cloyes and young shepherd Nicholas sought to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims.
The children’s mission was to “peacefully” convert Muslims while securing Christians’ right to the Holy Grail and Jerusalem. They were sent by the priests, backed by parents and the village communities of Northern France and Germany.
The people, the clergy and the all-powerful church would secure all glory for this noble sacrifice. Yet it would be the children who would venture out on this sacred mission. Who better to serve the people’s vainglorious goals than innocent children, desperate to obtain approval from their parents, the church and of course Almighty God.
The Children’s Crusade proved perilous and disastrous. Two out of every three children died. Merchants enslaved many who didn’t perish. Only a few returned home.
Perhaps this harrowing tale has a troubling echo today, with a new “noble cause” in which children are sacrificed while being hailed as heroes by activists, parents, society and the media. A children’s crusade of “climate crisis.”
Arguably a well-intentioned crusade but one not dissimilar from the one in the Middle Ages in terms of utilization, sacrifice and unconscious abuse of children.
Sowing seeds of “glory,” children serve on the front lines of this modern quest. Some suffer internalized feelings of terror and anxiety. They’re encouraged to spread end-of-days stories while trauma bonding with fearful adults — their elders eagerly encouraging the kids to be the voices of apocalyptic rhetoric.
An inconvenient sobering truth is that children and subsequent generations do and will suffer unconscious trauma states when parents refuse to address their own past wounds; the adults displace their childhood fears of annihilation onto world-stage issues for their children to bear. The culprits include notable political and religious figures.
Perhaps most egregious is how effortlessly children are simultaneously praised and inconsiderately burdened as poster children for the climate crisis. Just as in the Middle Ages, these young messengers prophesy doom and destruction, citing “impressive” facts and figures. Are they all that different from street prophets wearing “The End Is Near” billboards. A sad tale of children seamlessly failed by those who bear the responsibility to protect them.
What children need
Climate change is real. Children are entitled to all valid research, perspectives and worldviews. They deserve balanced information. They deserve to hear contrasting expert opinions.
Information including why France produces such low carbon emissions, due in part to the utilization of 75 percent of nuclear energy. Or why the United Nations report on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident found no immediate health risks. A host of other facts and information not fitting the activist agenda are often marginalized in pursuit of a singular narrative. Instead children receive and carry a message of terror and dread. How is a young person expected to integrate such extremities and not begin to fragment internally over time?
No wonder that children around the globe are being treated for “eco-anxiety.”
A 2018 study by a trio of Australian and U.S. researchers found: “Both the direct and flow-on effects of climate change place children at risk of mental health consequences including PTSD, depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep disorders, attachment disorders and substance abuse. These in turn can lead to problems with emotion regulation, cognition, learning, behavior, language development and academic performance.”
What is alarming and tragic to report is that suicide ideation among children is on the rise. Today’s children suffering from anxiety over climate issues. They fear adults are unable to protect them. A recent report found 37 percent of girls suffer from anxiety at school while distracted by fears of polar ice caps melting, among other issues.
The American Psychological Association has called for research into the mental health consequences of climate change.
Climate crisis poster child
Greta Thunberg, 16, is from Sweden. She’s hailed as an audacious modern-day heroine, a spokeschild addressing the United Nations on the issue of climate change. Many in the world have a use for Greta. Her guiling innocence, sweet braided hair and intelligence positing extreme rhetoric are lapped up by social media and recalcitrant fear-mongering adults. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
Young Greta bears the burden of a traumatic message regarding the likely end of our world in 2050 — unless drastic measures to reduce carbon emissions begin right now.
Greta openly states, “This is a huge burden for me, one I would rather not have, but no one else is stepping up. We are only doing this to wake the adults up!” Perhaps the time has come for adults to listen to this part of her narrative. Where are her adults?
A village of the emperor’s new clothes fails to recognize her plight. The clear plea is blindly ignored — her obvious concerns for preservation of her childhood. The cause of gathering more children to her crusade holds greater currency.
How little has changed from the Middle Ages to the workhouse days in England. Now the young are often placed on pedestals too big, too grandiose, for their developing vulnerable psyches; they’re applauded all the way to depressive breakdowns, suicidal ideations and even suicides, burdened by world matters obfuscating what childhood is all about: Being a child.
What will it take?
How many suicides of youthful despair will it take? How many antidepressants will our children need to consume, before it becomes clear the job of handling climate change was not that of the children in the first place.
Convenient utilization of a child has short- and long-term negative consequences. Adults need to gather up the mantle of climate change without the use of poster children. Schools need to provide balanced education on the subject, with expansive alternative perspectives, including those with hope for the future.
Children need to know the world is taking action on climate change. The world is making strides. As adults provide these hopeful messages, grounded in reality, they will reduce children’s anxieties and ease depressive states.
As balanced and mature adults step up, children will develop into rational adults able to forge creative solutions from a place of emotional and psychological stability — armed with a wide range of creative solutions to a solvable world issue.