According to Tanya Curtis, Senior Behaviour Specialist and founding director of FABIC Behaviour Specialist Centre, the simple answer to this question is no. Why? Because it takes a community to raise a child, and when we talk about community that includes anybody and everybody.
In her role as a behaviour specialist, Tanya is often asked whether she has children. And her answer invariably is, “Not biologically, but I’m a parent to thousands. I raise them towards higher levels of independence, increased capacity and commitment to life”.
And thus, we all parent someone else’s child or many people’s children, whether as an auntie, uncle, grandparent, neighbour, policeman, teacher or shopkeeper. We all have the opportunity to take responsibility for someone else’s child, be that for five minutes, an afternoon or a whole day, and support them to develop life skills and be committed to be in this world.
It doesn’t matter whether the person is biologically our child or not. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to support people to live in this world feeling equipped to respond to whatever life presents to them at any given moment.
This video may be useful for those searching for the following:
- Parenting someone else’s child
- Taking responsibility for someone else’s child
What to watch next:
And for a deeper dive into all things LASTING behaviour change with FABIC:
- Take a look at this article on children and anxiety or this one on sharing death and dying with children
- On FABIC.tv you will find the Sunlight Ink Children’s video books
- Hardcopies of these books are available in the FABIC shop
- And then there are individual Sunlight Ink posters and the complete poster collection available
