How Children Learn Dignity

Dignity Now! recently launched a Youth Action Team Project, which we’ve called the DigniTEAM! It’s part of Dignity Now’s effort to encourage young people to explore what dignity means in everyday life. Through writing, conversation, and community engagement, we are invited to notice how dignity appears– in our relationships, in the spaces we move through, and in the way we see ourselves and others. It’s easy to think about dignity as an ideal, a concept tied to human rights or justice movements. But through this project, I have discovered and recognized that it is something far more immediate– something that lives quietly in the small gestures of care and respect that make up our days. 

I have been following the journaling prompt we’ve asked them to think about: ״what do you see and how does it relate to dignity?״

Dignity, for me, is everywhere we go. It exists in the little interactions of everyday life and in the big goals that we set for ourselves. I have been lucky enough to have grown up in an environment where human dignity felt like a given to me for my entire life. My family, my school, the town I grew up in– no one has ever doubted my self-worth. Not for being a woman, not for being Queer, not for being Jewish. I was surrounded by people who made me feel that I belonged, that my voice mattered, and that my identity was something to celebrate. 

However, I know that dignity is not always a given. For many people, dignity must be defended, asserted, or rediscovered. I am reminded of this often in my work teaching 4-6 year olds in an after-school program. These are Jewish children, mostly from secure socio-economic backgrounds, many from Queer and multi-faith families– children who, by instinct, I imagine also know they have the right to dignity. Yet even among them, I see moments when dignity isn’t automatic– when they discover it for the first time.

There are small, fleeting interactions that could be easily missed: a child learning to say “no” when a peer hugs them too tightly; another realizing that the way someone talks to them can make them feel disrespected or dismissed. When I see them pause, recognize a feeling, and set a boundary, I can almost see the moment their sense of self-worth expands. It begins with understanding their physical boundaries– learning that they can express when they are uncomfortable with touch or tone. It grows when they notice how others speak to them, and when they start to use words like “respect” and “fairness.”  They begin to understand that respect is not something they earn by behaving well– it’s something they deserve simply because they are human. And when they extend that same respect to each other– listening, apologizing, making space– I see dignity unfolding right before me.

Teaching young children has shown me that dignity is not just something we can lecture about; it’s something modeled and felt. It’s in the way we listen to them seriously, the way we meet them at eye level, the way we answer their questions in depth and with respect. Each small act tells them: you matter, your voice matters, your feelings matter.

But I have also learned that dignity is fragile. It can disappear quickly when a voice is dismissed. When well-intentioned adults, myself included, sometimes overlook the importance of listening, assuming that things will just “slip their mind.” Yet, they rarely do. They remember when they were heard and when they were not. Those interactions shape how they see themselves.

Reflecting on these moments, I have realized that dignity is both deeply personal and profoundly collective. It begins in the self, but it is sustained by the community. We help each other see our worth through the ways we interact– through curiosity instead of judgment, through inclusion instead of indifference.

My hope is that the children I teach will carry the understanding that every person deserves respect, belonging, and the right to be themselves without fear.  In a world where so many still have to fight for their dignity to be acknowledged and practiced, choosing to see and act for it in my everyday life is my way to contribute.