Evolving Capacities

Evolving capacities is a child rights principle holding that a childs ability to exercise their own rights grows step by step as they develop, so that education and youth programs should recognize a childs increasing independence while still balancing protection against room for the child to make their own decisions. The idea comes out of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and reflects the view that childhood is not one uniform stage, so children need different amounts of protection, guidance and say depending on where they are in their development. It works on two levels, recognizing that children gradually gain abilities that call for less protective intervention, and recognizing that this development happens at different speeds across cultures and individual circumstances, with adults still responsible for shielding children from choices beyond their current capacity while respecting the capacities children do have. The Canadian International Development Agency named three considerations that follow from the principle, understanding a childs evolving capacities in their own context, building on the abilities the child already has, and guarding against giving a child responsibility before they are ready for it. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/