Family and educational spaces—both formal and non-formal—often function as mechanisms of control in which power relations are enacted. Children and adolescents are, in these cases, understood more as objects than as subjects, expected to comply with mandates imposed on their bodies and their time, without consideration of consent and without questioning authority. This takes place at a crucial stage in the development of their autonomy, interoception, self-knowledge, and self-esteem. The lack of contact with (and the limited credibility given to) their own needs, desires, bodies, emotional states, and opinions distances them from themselves. Over time, this can turn them—both as individuals and as collectives—into people who are disconnected from their own feelings and sensations, highly vulnerable to external pressure, less able to validate and honestly express their experiences, and prone to present and future distress related to not attending to their needs.

These dynamics become far more harmful for people who fall outside the norm, whose needs are not even seen or recognized—often not even by themselves. I am referring to those who go through childhood, and especially adolescence, overstimulated, exhausted, and dysregulated, many times without even perceiving it or knowing how to name it due to the rigidity of their environments. Their lives are shaped by a system that is alien and suffocating to them, which is why many adolescents live on autopilot, feeling powerless and lacking agency over their own bodies: they consistently sleep less than they need, feel uncomfortable without being able to move to other spaces, and try to fit into alienating molds. Naming these experiences—from difference and from the margins—becomes almost impossible for these individuals, who will simply feel “weird,” uncomfortable, and misunderstood, with all that this implies for their self-perception, self-esteem, and self-care.

I propose humanizing childhoods and adolescences: recognizing children and adolescents as subjects, as agents, and as deserving of care; their autonomy, needs, rhythms, and individualities matter. The spaces of minors function as sites of power that replicate and rehearse what will potentially become their future work, family, and social environments. By integrating the idea that not questioning authority is morally correct, we strip them of their most powerful tool for self-care and collective transformation: self-listening and connection with themselves—affecting especially those who align least with the norm. It is time to take responsibility: to dare to listen to their voices, and to discover what might happen if we gave back to them what should always have been theirs.