I never thought brushing my teeth in a campground bathroom would lead to a perspective-shifting conversation about how we view children. But there I was, face-to-face with a jovial stranger hearing a profound message.

I met this stranger while brushing my teeth this weekend, in the Cades Cove Campground bathroom at Great Smokey Mountain National Park. People camping at National Parks are generally friendly, probably because choosing to sleep outside where your main recreation is strenuously walking, without creature comforts like showers or a fully-functioning kitchen takes someone with a unique kind of frustration tolerance. That frustration tolerance is probably part of the reason why camping people are willing to take the risk of talking candidly with people they’ve never met.

I thought my new friend was probably German given his accent and shoulder length blonde hair. Turns out, he was.

He and his wife turned out to be our nearest campsite neighbor and they were both recently retired from their careers in Hamburg, Germany. When we left the park today we got to actually talking, as we offered our extra firewood to them just before we departed in hopes they’d get some use out of it.

Even though I had met him, literally while brushing teeth at 9:30pm at night only 36 hours earlier, our conversation turned to parenting.

He was a young grandparent and he commented on how he was grateful that the German system made deliberate choices to support children and tried to make parenting an attractive proposition. He added how hard it was, even in the German system, for his son and daughter-in-law to tend to their young son, and balance the demands of parenting with that of their jobs. It was so confusing, he thought, that in America we would undermine children, parents, and families by not even allowing simple supports like parental leave.

I agreed with him, but so far what he said was relatively unsurprising. After all, it’s no surprise that parenting today is extremely tough and it’s no secret that our level of support in America for children, parents, and families is something to be laughed at and not lauded, especially in comparison to other developed nations.

But then, he said something that really pushed the conversation beyond polite talking points:

“We should honor our children. They are our future.”

That word, honor, is fundamentally different than how we usually talk about children in America.

We talk about “taking care” of children or “giving opportunities” to children. We don’t take the posture of honoring children.

To honor children is a fundamentally different conception of the role of children in society. When comparing the words, taking care and giving opportunities feels so transactional whereas honoring children elevates their societal standing and implies that we owe them a debt of reverence or gratitude.

Honestly, we probably do. We shouldn’t think about children as people to take care of or give opportunities to. We should think about children as people to honor.

Today, I was thinking a lot about what my new friend said. Especially because our oldest son starts Kindergarten this week. My role as a father is changing in a hurry and I’ve been thinking about what it will mean, not just to be a father to my sons, but what it will mean to be a father in a school community.

Upon reflection, the idea of honoring children is most interesting to me because of how inclusive it feels.

My friend from Hamburg implied that he was talking about honoring all children. I could tell he loves his own children and believes they are special - I saw the spark in him that dads get when they talk about their kids…the same one I do.

But he was thinking beyond his own kids. I could tell that he believed that all children deserved parents who could spend time with them. He believed that all children should live in a safe and loving community. He believed that all children should be able to learn and grow. He believed that we should honor all children in our community, not just our own children.

And what would it mean, I thought, if I tried to honor all children?

It would be paying extra into the pot to subsidize child care, even after my kids are grown. It would mean being supportive of anyone I work with and helping them manage their workload so they can be parents and caregivers. It would mean loving my own kids dearly, but also being loving, honest, and nurturing of all children - whether that’s as a member of our school’s Dads’ Club, or a soccer coach, or a volunteer writing tutor, or summer party host in our backyard. It would mean paying attention to the neighborhood kids on the block and being a watchful eye for their safety and to step in if their shenanigans surpass what I know their parents would tolerate.

This will be such a hard believe to actually walk the walk on, I know already.

On the one hand, I love my kids so dearly. They matter so much to me. They are special kids, because they are my kids. These three are my sons. They need me to love them so much, and to put them ahead of others. I know that as their father, it’s my job to love and sacrifice for them. If I don’t put them first, who will?

And yet, it’s true that all children, collectively, are indeed our future.

All our children will take care of us in old age. And they will inherit the world we leave. And for goodness sake, we’re talking about children - doing the best we can is just the right thing to do instinctively. That’s all obvious.

But beyond that, all our children are my childrens’ future, too.

All our children will be inter-connected in the future. Your kids will go to college with my kids someday. Your kids will be lifelong friends with my kids someday. Our kids will go to bars and to basketball games down at the arena someday, and even if they don’t know each other, they’ll be in the same room, over and over, without even knowing it. They will share the same roads, the same airports, the same parks, and the same grocery stories. They will be colleagues and business partners someday.

At the end of the day, all y’all’s kids will affect mine and mine will affect yours.

It’s the right thing to do to honor all children, but if I really get down to it it’s in my selfish interest too. If my kids are going to be intertwined and inter-dependent with your kids, it is stupid not to make sure all kids are healthy, happy, and loved. I don’t want my kids to be stuck living in a world full of broken adults, and neither do you. Nobody does.

And yet, I know it will be so tempting to me when the choice arises to give my kid every advantage and opportunity even if it screws over someone else’s kid. But I need to think twice about that. The long-term future we all want is a world where all kids are honored, and that means I need to contribute to that dream by honoring all children instead of free-riding on everyone else’s grace and generosity.

This will be hard, and that’s the part of the reason why I’m writing about this publicly. Now it’s possible to shame me if I make choices that are nakedly self-interested toward my kids’ benefit at the cost of yours. That’s pressure and risk I’m willing to bear. If our political system and public policy are going to create a framework and incentive structure that encourages me to advocate for my children even if it means screwing yours over, I need every possible support I can to buck the trend.

Because, damn, what a world it would be if we could get to a place of honoring all children rather than than just loving, supporting, and nurturing our own. It would probably lead all children to be better off, including our own. If all kids rise, so will mine.

It’s astounding to me that a major belief of mine - on the role of children in society - has been so disproportionally influenced by a stranger I talked to for a total of 15 minutes, over the course of 36 hours because we were neighbors at a National Park.

And yet here I am, putting this out into the world, with a full heart: we should not just take care of or give opportunities to our own children, we should honor all children.

If you’re a parent, or even just around kids a lot, I think you should dig deep on this one. I’d ask you to look within and really decide - is it your own children that you’re solely focused on, or do you also believe that we should aspire to honor all children?