The media will have a field day today with and about children, as they do every year on International Children's Day.

This very morning, curtains are to be raised on get-togethers, award ceremonies, and other scheduled activities in schools, auditoriums and parks the country over. And officials are expected to attend, and especially visit those children in need, such as kids with disabilities or HIV/AIDS.

The public will also hear more calls and advice from media commentators and experts on how to best take care of their children. In the past few days, the public has been bombarded with warnings about unsafe toys, contaminated milk powder and health problems such as child obesity.

In all this hoopla, the public is likely to hear more voices of adults than children.

In most of today's events, children are more likely to be passive participants than initiators. Even when children do speak, their words were likely penned by a parent or teacher beforehand.

Maybe we should swivel the microphones and let children speak their own minds, while we sit back and take in what they have to say.

The Shanghai Centre for Juveniles and Children has set a good example by surveying some 6,000 children in the country's largest metropolis. During the survey, the children expressed a myriad of wishes from a desire to have more leisure time, more time to sleep, and more privacy from parents and teachers to the hope of a safer public environment.

These are not opinions our society can choose to ignore. For China made a pledge 15 years ago when the country ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by the United Nations' General Assembly in 1989 and came into force in 1990.

In the convention, Article 12 stipulates that "States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child."

Meanwhile, children should be provided "the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law."

The convention's Article 13 further stresses that children have the right to freedom of expression. This right includes "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds" in all forms and media of a child's choice. This freedom is only restricted when issues concerning national security and public health arise.

In actuality, it's going to take time before the media as well as society develop the sensitivity and will to listen to the free expression of children in China, as the Shanghai centre has done.

After all, it has been a theme that children, who do not have the means to support themselves and are too young to be independent in their own thoughts, should follow and obey adults.

As scholars, such as Bu Wei from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, point out, seeing children manipulated or adults making decisions concerning their children's welfare, without consulting the children, is all too commonplace.

But as our society becomes increasingly open and strives for broader democracy, children's rights to free expression and opinion, especially in issues concerning them as individuals and citizens, must be respected and protected.

So it is time we start paying attention to our kids, not only on this International Children's Day, so it may become a habit, and above all, a matter of principle.

(China Daily June 1, 2005)