How My 9-Year-Old Self Would Vote- A Reflection on Childhood Ideals

Have you ever wondered how your nine your old self would want you to vote in an election? I only thought about it because my nine-year-old came home so excited from school and after hearing all the party platforms, he was voting Green! He said more than anything he just wants to save nature and animals and keep ourselves safe from climate change and from polluting our country with excessive garbage.

Which made me wonder, could I break down my ideals into a child’s? Now I know children don’t pay the bills but what about just looking at what was the most important to us and are we staying true or I guess even do we want to stay true to the ideals we had in mind for our world to look like when we grew up. 

Our girls growing up said that we had one rule for what we expected for behavior in school. Above all else, they said that we had told them if they were kind and tried their best, it did not matter to us how anything else went in school.

So, thinking about how we raised them and the values we were taught when we were little, I’m going to try to reconstruct what things at 9 I would have voted for.

1. Everyone should always be kind.
2. Everyone should feel included.
3. We help others who need help.
4. We don’t want our world to look like a garbage filled concrete jungle.
5. We help and are kind to animals.
6. We support local home-grown foods, meats, and vegetables.
7. We want a leader who is respectable and highly regarded in the world stage, a businessman with class. (I’ll never forget meeting Bryan Mulroney at expo 86 and my Dad being proud to reach over to shake his hand).

This is not meant to be a political agenda type blog; it is just my wonderment of how it looks different as an adult than as a child. We are shaped by our parents and communities, yet I think there are a lot of children in school that vote green when they hear the platforms.

How do we keep our ideals and values while still supporting industrial growth to fuel our government services?

I guess that is what they call adulting. 🙂

Chat soon, 

Michelle