Hi Christina --

Some great thoughts, here. I definitely agree with your point about empathy. I would add one caveat, though: I think some individuals are just more naturally predisposed to behaving empathetically. Others can learn to become more empathic. And a certain subset (probably larger than we realize) are going to resist empathy every step of the way.

How to navigate around the actions of that latter group is another thing we should be teaching children. When I was growing up (in the 80s and 90s), the go-to advice from teachers/aides at my school, in response to bullies, was: "Just ignore them, and they'll go away." Surprise! -- that rarely ever worked!

Definitely agreed with your beliefs on ecological reverence.

Also, while upholding the concept of respecting others' physical & verbal boundaries -- do you, on the flip side, have any thoughts about how to proactively teach children healthy attitudes and accessibility (consent) when it comes to proactively showing affection?

I agree with most of what you're saying about mental health, but I'd push back slightly against one of your points: being somebody who struggles with mental health, myself -- yes, you can control how you react to stress or adversity. To an extent. I think that teaching children from a very young age a multitude of strategies for dealing with toxic people would be extremely useful to people such as myself who can often misprocess and internalize toxicity (from others)...and, part of that reality for us is that we often just don't have the psychological makeup to "let it go" without first using the adversity to make a positive impact on others.