"It was not a great parenting moment,” Colleen Taylor says of her response to an event that would re-route the life of her daughter.
It was Christmas in Winnipeg, and they came across a homeless man eating out of a garbage can. Hannah, then 5, asked: Why?
Mrs. Taylor answered as best she could, then hoped her child's crisis of conscience would blow over. But the questions kept coming: Why doesn't he have a home? Why do we? Who loves him? Finally, a year later, Hannah turned to a teacher who encouraged the little girl to take action.
Now 13, Hannah has raised more than $1-million for the homeless through her charitable organization, the Ladybug Foundation. The Grade 8 student has received numerous humanitarian awards and has met Sir Bob Geldof and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Most importantly, her mother says, Hannah is happy to be doing something to help.
“As parents, we don't always know what's best for our child,” says Mrs. Taylor. “If we just learn to listen, their profound sense of right and wrong is just that: Profound.”
In the years since 12-year-old Craig Kielburger of Toronto took a stand against child labour and wound up on Oprah and winning the children's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, many more young people have followed his lead. Through the Internet and a growing number of youth-driven programs like Free the Children, the charity Mr. Kielburger founded with his brother, Marc, more children have both a greater awareness of the problems of the world and the power to do something about it.
Parents also have more tools: This summer, the Kielbergers and journalist Shelley Page will release The World Needs Your Kid, a parenting book on how to nurture the newest generation of good Samaritans.
But raising the next Craig Kielburger (he is now 26) can be as mystifying as it is thrilling. On the one hand, having a kid who has shaken hands with world leaders is a source of inspiration and pride. But it can also mean your role can suddenly change from parent to a combination of publicist and manager.
As a child is exposed to an adoring public, parents find themselves torn between supporting their kids' passion and keeping them grounded enough to do their homework. It can also be a little bizarre to be schooled on life's lessons by your offspring, instead of the other way around.
“I used to be a jewellery lady, with lots of designer purses,” says Shamim Rajan, the mother of a 12-year-old activist named Bilaal Rajan of Richmond Hill, Ont. Then one day her son reminded her about the world's starving children while they were out shopping.
Bilaal was four years old when, horrified by a news story about an earthquake in India, he decided to help. Almost overnight, Mrs. Rajan says, she was fielding calls from journalists interested in the boy who cites Gandhi and the Aga Khan as his heroes. Today, he is a Unicef Canada children's ambassador, book author and motivational speaker. He has raised nearly $5-million for causes that range from helping victims of hurricane-ravaged Haiti to supporting children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
His mother, a part-time pharmacist, is so busy managing his schedule that she rarely gets to bed before midnight.
There are other trade-offs for these families. In school, bullies can be cruel. Once, Winnipeg police were called when a strange man turned up at school asking for Hannah. Both sets of parents take measures to ensure the public doesn't perceive them as overzealous puppet masters: The Rajans avoid being in the room when their son is interviewed; the Taylors have largely remained behind the scenes.
Still, the Taylors discovered that once you're in the spotlight, people make assumptions about you that aren't true.
