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against the hardness of the crib, or feeling the stiff edge of a seam inside clothes.
Babies look to parents to provide the soft touches: silky blankets, comforting hugs, and loving caresses. With almost every touch a newborn is learning about life, so provide lots of tender kisses and your infant will find the world is a soothing place to be.
Should I Be Concerned?
If you just want a little reassurance that your baby's senses are working well, you can do some unscientific testing for yourself. When quiet and alert without other distractions, will your baby focus and follow your face or favorite toy?
If your baby's eyes seem to cross more than just briefly, be sure to tell your doctor. In some instances, medical cor-
rection may be required. Also tell the doctor if your baby's eyes appear cloudy or filmy, or if they appear to wander in circles as they attempt to focus.
Most newborns will startle if surprised by a loud noise nearby. Other ways to rest assured your baby is hearing well: Does your baby calm down when he or she hears your voice. Does your baby turn to the sound of a rattle? Does your baby respond to soft lullabies or other music? Do sounds made out of sight capture your baby's attention?
If you have any concerns about your newborn's ability to see or hear, talk to your doctor. Even newborns can be tested using sophisticated equipment, if necessary. The sooner a potential problem is caught, the better it can be treated.
Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD September 2011
STARTING THE DEBATE ON THE ROLE OF CHILDREN IN PHILOSOPHY
Eike Brock, Michael Thomas, Jochen Ehrich, Juergen Manemann
Introduction
Curiosity, imagination, fantasy, and continuous questioning: the child seems to be a natural philosopher until the age of eight to ten years, when the initial spirit of inquiry mysteriously seems to fade. What happens to them?
Innovative ideas, dreams and endless speculations: adolescents and young people start creating and planning their own new world. Have they reached the level of becoming experienced philosophers?
Rational decisions, pragmatism, disillusions, lack of time for thinking, and poisonous competition seem to rule the life of adults. Has the adult world missed the chance to practice philosophy and more importantly to understand the child as a philosopher?
Philosophical Practice and Clinical Philosophy
Gareth Matthews takes up these concerns in Philosophy and the young Child. Trying to understand a philosophy that represents the range and depth of children's inquisitive minds, he explores both how children think and how adults think about them: "Adults discourage children from asking philosophical questions, first by being patronizing to them and then by directing their inquiring minds towards more 'useful' questions. Most adults aren't themselves interested in philosophical questions. They may be threatened by some of them. Moreover, it doesn't occur to most adults that there are questions that a child can ask that they can't provide a definitive answer to and that aren't answered in a standard dictionary or encyclopaedia either."
For Matthews, the impoverishment of the philosophical thinking of children and adolescents is regrettable insofar as it allows the potential for critical and creative thinking to fall by the wayside. This in itself would already be bad enough, but in the course of aforementioned impoverishment, further essential knowledge that philosophy offers to each single being is lost. The education of the practical ability to react rationally to critical developments in life and the application of the therapeutic potential of philosophy will be neglected. In the Socratic tradition, the central
concern of philosophy is the education "of a single being to develop the ability to react to the world"; besides this, according to Socratic-Platonic self-understanding, concern for the soul is part of its main scope. Thus, philosophy aims at the health of the soul. Sadly, in the process of its academic professionalization, the therapeutic dimension of philosophy has faded increasingly into the background. The rise of Philosophical Practices outside of universities beginning in 1980 was a reaction to this trend. In Philosophical Practice, particularly in Philosophical Counseling, in the conversation between the philosophical practitioner and his or her client, the focus is not only on the primal philosophical question, the question concerning the good life. A special challenge is certainly constituted by the problem of how you can live a good life even under difficult conditions. As a basic experience of life, which, at the same time, causes its troublesomeness, illness is an important topic of the Philosophical Practice. In Clinical Philosophy, a synthesis of philosophy and medicine finally takes place. The clinical philosopher Martin Poltrum advocates the employment of philosophers in clinics: "What would such a philosopher do? On the one hand he would be a contact person for patients who have a current metaphysical need caused by illness, sorrow, death, and other borderline situations, and are pressed by questions which are discussed traditionally in philosophy, and on the other hand he would be the counselor for the medical staff for medical, psychotherapeutic and care ethical problems. An additional task of the clinical philosopher would be the institutionalization of lectures about the art of living [...] because especially in hospitals there is an increased interest in knowledge of life caused by the situation of being ill." This approach is worthy of applause. However, it doesn't consider the possibility of a specialized clinical philosopher for ill children and adolescents. The field of work for such a philosopher would be quite different to the one described above. Among other tasks, this philosopher would not only advise the medical staff and the patients but also the parents of the patients. Considering the fact that children can, as mentioned above,
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be seen as natural philosophers in a certain way, the clinical philosopher on the pediatric ward of a hospital would be a highly reasonable innovation. He or she would encourage the children to give their 'inner philosopher' full scope and would assist them caringly in orientating themselves in the world — especially under the preconditions of being ill.
The child as a philosopher
Basically all children in their capacity as newcomers to this world are disposed to orient themselves in the world. Admittedly, this is a task that essentially is never completed because humans, as existing creatures, are subject to permanent change, and the world is engaged in a constant transformation. Hence, not only children, but also grown-ups have to orient themselves in the world. It is beyond dispute that adults, in comparison with children, possess more experience with regard to this challenge. Therefore, adults are required to help children with their orientation in the world. Usually, children trust adults to do just that. More precisely, they believe that the grown-ups want to and can help them to find orientation in the world. The betrayal of this naive basic trust is catastrophic.
Philosophy is orientation in thinking and at the same time orientation in the world through thinking. From this perspective, doing philosophy is an essential task for survival. However, doing philosophy is also, as we can see watching children discover the world, a fundamental human need. To a certain extent, everyone is doing philosophy. Humans as creatures with the capacity for language principally also possess the capacity for doing philosophy. This alone, however, does not automatically make each human a philosopher. Philosophy in the advanced sense is a strict affair, which usually puts a strong emphasis on methodological as well as logical aspects. Philosophy can be practiced or trained. Now, if grownups practice philosophy with children, ideally both parties profit from the training because children are doing philosophy differently from adults. Adults possess greater
...AND CHILD HEALTH
experience in thinking, so that they can guide the children in the thought process.
By contrast, childlike thinking is more naive — innocent, as Nietzsche puts it. Infantile thinking distinguishes itself through a form of refreshing naivety, which adult thinking has lost in the course of years. This naivety can sometimes have an unmasking quality. Thinking does not blindly accept common truths. While adults are inclined to comfortably confine themselves in a shell of preestablished truths, children are not as quick to settle for common sense explanations. They especially do not accept explanations that are contrary to their worldly experience. Naively, children simply cling to what they have experienced or seen, no matter the parental assurance that, "actually," such and such is the case. By this means the persistent asking child is able to help the grown up philosopher to get to the bottom of things by hindering him or her to come up with immediate answers which prevent a deep illumination of the matter in question.
Those who do philosophy with children should ask what children have seen and what answers they have given to serious questions. Adults should not patronize children. It is absolutely essential in education "to give children responsibility in accord with their level of development — also for their thinking". Patronizing, however, even if it is based on a nurturing intention, is the death of child philosophers, whose central organ is imagination.
A philosophical education for children emphasizes responsibility. Philosophical education is an invitation to think for oneself in a twofold manner: on the one hand through the practice of thinking, the "capacity to use one sown intelligence", as Kant phrases it; and on the other hand through imparting a fundamental disposition of openness. Basically, everything can be questioned and put into different perspectives. To wonder in this context is not so much an expression of naivety, as it is the precondition of an incipient mode of thinking, which does not only operate logically, but also creatively.
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In September, the focus of the ISSOP (International Society for Social Pediatrics and Child Health) annual meeting was the Sustainable Development Goals.
Developed by the UN to reply the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs are more comprehensive but also rather 'clunky' — in other words, long winded and difficult to summarise effectively.
Sustainable Development Goals (1/2016-12/2030) Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security, improved nutrition, promote sustainable agriculture Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education,
promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management
of water and sanitation for all Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive,
sustainable industrialization & foster innovation Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive,
safe, resilient and sustainable Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas &
marine resources for sustainable development Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
