Speaking of Kids Is Changing to Kids Can’t Wait: A New Name with an Increasingly Urgent Mission

Dear Readers,

This Substack began as Speaking of Kids, a name I once shared with the podcast I co-hosted. While my time on the podcast has ended, the Speaking of Kids name is finding a new home with the First Focus on Children Substack and the relaunched podcast hosted by Messellech Abebe.

As for this space? It’s evolving.

Today, I’m announcing a new name for this Substack: Kids Can’t Wait.

This is not just a rename. It’s a re-commitment rooted in urgency, memory, and hope for our children.

Children Are at a Crossroads

The new name reflects a mission that has only become increasingly urgent. Nearly every indicator of child well-being is trending in the wrong direction:

• Rising Infant and Maternal Mortality

• Rising Child Mortality

• Rise in Gun Violence Deaths (homicides, suicides)

• Child Poverty Doubled: 5.2% in 2021 to 13.7% in 2023

• Increasing Rates of Uninsured Children

• A Deepening Children’s Mental Health Crisis

• Increasing Rates of Child Hunger

• Growth in Child and Family Homelessness

• Declining Vaccine Rates (outbreaks of measles, the flu, and pertussis are all on the rise)

• Ongoing Child Abuse Scandals by Religious, Private, and Governmental Institutions

Rather than meeting the moment and responding with moral clarity, understanding, and strategic investments that improve the health, education, development, safety, best interests, and well-being of children, far too many policymakers are stoking fear, waging culture wars, and pushing policies that divide, defund, neglect, and actively harm children.

Sadly, children are being used as pawns in a political war – spoken about, but not spoken for. Our politics are failing to ensure that the needs, voices, and rights of children are prioritized or even considered. Even when children should be the focus of a policy, they are often an afterthought. Or worse, children are being specifically targeted for harm.

Consider this:

• This Administration and congressional leadership are slashing funding and programs of importance to low-income children, while claiming their actions are “for the next generation.”

• They are gutting maternal and child health programs while claiming to support mothers and babies.

• They are threatening everything from health care coverage, to child nutrition, to immunizations, to mental health care, to medical research, to even toothpaste, while claiming to want to Make America Healthy for Children Again (here is what a real agenda might look like).

• They say they want a more educated and successful next generation, while slashing federal investments in education and early childhood programs and child care, undermining public schools, attacking higher education, threatening libraries, whitewashing curriculum, and even are vilifying Elmo, Arthur, and Mister Rodgers.

• They proclaim their support for free speech while banning books, enforcing speech codes and censorship, and punishing dissent and alternative viewpoints.

• They stoke fear and opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion and otherize immigrants and the LGBTQ community, which places a generation that is more diverse, more welcoming, and more compassionate in the crosshairs, often as collateral damage.

At a time when the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are receiving hundreds of billions in new money and the wealthy are benefitting from trillions in tax breaks, our children are being told there is no money for them and their future.

The political agenda is one that supports the wealthy over the poor, the old over the young, the past over the future, and graft over the needs of children and families. These are not just misplaced priorities, but a moral failure.

Why Kids Can’t Wait?

This name is deeply personal.

Texas Kids Can’t Wait was the title of a small but mighty nonprofit my mother, Dr. Bonnie Lesley, co-founded with incredible women like Susan Josephs and Linda Ethridge in Central Texas.

Over her 50-year career in education and advocacy, my mom always put the needs of children and families first. She earned a doctorate in education, but she always understood that poverty, health care, nutrition, housing, stress, violence, and abuse are all education issues that are fundamental to ensuring children thrive and learn.

Her lifetime of work, including the Money Matters publications she wrote with the Texas Equity Center (see here and here), and her unwavering belief that children deserve better (even in the face of political threats) has shaped my life and continues to guide my work. I carry her voice and sense of justice with me…always.

The name, Texas Kids Can’t Wait, echoes the powerful words of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, who wrote:

Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his or her bones are formed, his or her mind developed. To them, we cannot say tomorrow, their name is today.

These words, this truth, my mother’s unfinished work, and her sense of urgency will always serve as my compass.

Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Greater Urgency.

While the Substack name may be new, the commitment and purpose are not. My hope is to continue to raise the visibility of children in our political debates, to challenge the structures that render them invisible, and to advocate for real, measurable progress in their lives.

What will be new is an increased expression of intensity. The focus, clearer. The urgency, louder.

We are in a moment of rising inequality, growing rates of child poverty, underfunded services, and political narratives that ignore or exploit children rather than serve them. Kids Can’t Wait is a response to that moment.

This platform will be bolder, more unapologetic, and more insistent on protecting and empowering children. We cannot simply defend the status quo since the status quo has failed far too many of our children and grandchildren. We must demand better, and we must act faster. There must be a stronger sense of urgency and impatience because delays in policymaking cost children years that will fail another generation.

What’s Coming

You can expect the same mix of data-driven analysis, proposed policy solutions, personal reflection, and passionate advocacy. Upcoming posts will address:

• The threats that MAGA is posing to children

• How austerity politics are shortchanging our children and our future

• The persistent erasure of children from media and legislation

• The evidence and research that make the case for investing in kids

• The voices of young people and those who champion children

• A bold, child-centered policy agenda for today and beyond

Join This Movement

If you have been with me since Speaking of Kids, thank you. If you are new here, welcome. Either way, I am honored you are part of this journey, and I hope you will help this space and conversation grow.

Here’s how:

• Subscribe, if you haven’t already (and please consider being a paid subscriber).

• Share this post with others who care about kids.

• Comment on what you want to see more of.

• Forward this to a policymaker, reporter, or friend. Use the hashtag #KidsCantWait in your social media. Help us raise the volume and urgency of this moment.

• Make a donation to the work, as we cannot advocate for children without the support of our donors and supporters. This is our 20th Anniversary, so we would ask your consideration of either a $200 or $20 donation to First Focus on Children.

Kids can’t wait for a more child-centered political reality. They can’t wait for older generations to get their act together. They need us to act like their needs matter in the here and now.

Let’s make them visible. Let’s make this moment count.

They cannot wait any longer.

In solidarity for our children and grandchildren.