Nicholas Kristof on Darfur, and then guest columnist Stacy Schiff on modern parenting.

Genocide may be the worst of crimes, but historically it has also brought out the best in some people.

The Raoul Wallenbergs of 2007 speckle America and the globe. And I don’t just mean the aid workers — 13 of whom have been murdered for their efforts in Darfur since last May — but also those ordinary Americans who have united in a grass-roots campaign to try to stop genocide half a world away in Sudan.

President Bush and other world leaders have dropped the ball on Darfur. But that vacuum of moral leadership has been filled by university students, churches and temples, celebrities like George Clooney and Mia Farrow, and armies of schoolchildren.

Their arsenal — green armbands, phone calls to the White House, bake sales to raise money — all seem pallid. How can a “Save Darfur” lawn sign in Peoria intimidate government-backed raiders in Sudan or Chad who throw babies into bonfires?

Yet, finally, we see evidence that those armbands and lawn signs can make a difference. Last week, the Save Darfur Coalition — the grass-roots organization that puts out those lawn signs — sponsored a trip by Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor, to Khartoum to negotiate with President Omar al-Bashir.

Sure, it’s a little weird when a private advocacy group undertakes freelance diplomacy. But if George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Hu Jintao twiddle their thumbs, then more power to the freelancers.

Mr. Richardson worked out a joint statement in which Sudan agreed to a 60-day cease-fire to allow peace talks to resume, provided the Darfur rebels go along as well. Mr. Bashir also agreed that Sudan would prosecute rapes and stop painting its military aircraft to look as if they belong to the U.N.

The first thing to say is that Mr. Bashir has repeatedly broken his pledges in the past. Count me deeply skeptical about whether it will be any different this time. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a Sudanese human rights campaigner, told me he thinks that President Bashir simply made cosmetic concessions in hopes of winning the
chairmanship of the African Union later this month.

That said, there may be a path forward here. While U.N. peacekeepers and a no-fly zone are needed, ultimately the only way to end the slaughter is to achieve a peace agreement in Darfur. And that seems more feasible today than it was a week ago.

Most striking, it’s clear that the cease-fire was a consequence of all those armbands and lawn signs. Mr. Richardson told me that Mr. Bashir was motivated by concern at the way the killings have been spotlighted by Darfur activists. Mr. Richardson quoted him as saying, “These guys have caused me a lot of damage.”

Ken Bacon, who heads Refugees International and accompanied Mr. Richardson, said of President Bashir: “One thing that was very clear was that the Save Darfur movement has gotten under his skin. The vilification of the Khartoum regime in columns and editorials and ads is making a difference.”

So cherish this historical moment. The long record of genocide is one overwhelmingly of acquiescence, but this time ordinary citizens are trying to write a different ending.

There are the students at Santa Clara University in California who replicated a mini refugee camp and slept in it. They limited themselves to 1,000 calories a day — because that’s what Darfuris are limited to — and donated the savings to aid groups.

Or there’s Jason Miller, a California M.D./Ph.D student who in his spare time has become the foremost expert on how investments by foreign companies underwrite the Sudanese genocide. Or Beth Reilly, a stay-at-home mom in Indiana who works on Darfur a little bit every day. Or the legions of schoolkids who organize car washes, and ask for donations in lieu of birthday presents, in hopes of saving other children halfway around the globe.

Sudan’s leaders are used to bullying everyone. Jan Pronk, who was the United Nations envoy in Sudan until Khartoum ejected him, reports in his Weblog that a U.N. official recently went to the authorities in Darfur to complain about human rights violations. A Sudanese official retorted: “You better shut up. We can always expel you, as we have proven.”

But finally President Bashir is confronting people whom he can’t bully. Let’s have no illusions about how much more pressure will be necessary to stop the slaughter, but let’s also celebrate this moment. Mr. Bashir has blinked, showing that it just may be possible to fight genocide with moral courage and lawn signs.

Next up, guest columnist Stacy Schiff on modern parenting. (Thank God I wasn’t subjected to it … I got to be a kid and do “kid stuff.”)

A generation ago, the adult world looked from the ground as it does to a Looney Tunes character: a flash of trouser cuff, a blur of hemline, the jingle of a highball glass and poof! — it was gone. In the age of professional parenting, it is something of a mystery that any of us survived, much less learned to add, dream or brush our teeth.

Last week, New York City officials unveiled plans for a cutting-edge downtown playground, conceived as the first of many. Partly financed by its designer, David Rockwell, the Burling Slip project combines running water, sand, an open boardwalk, an array of loose parts, and — to encourage “imaginative interaction” — a trained team of “play workers.” Let’s leave the oxymoron to die of natural causes. Philanthropy, and thinking beyond the swings and seesaws of the Robert Moses era, are both to be applauded. But has any consultant to this project ever offered catnip to a cat? As has been noted, kids will turn anything into a rocket ship, including dinner plates.

I’m the first to admit that it takes a village. I would no sooner vote against foam blocks or burlap bags than against the tooth fairy, especially in Lower Manhattan; my eldest was raised indoors, at the Winter Garden. But as Tom Perrotta made splendidly clear in “Little Children,” the only toxic element on a playground tends to be the adults. And I don’t mean the child molesters. Surely more maternal anxiety has been whipped up on park benches than in preschool interviews.

You can write “play workers” down to affluence; if you have a bath butler, you surely need a play worker. Assisted living is wasted on the elderly. In a consultant-driven culture, anything can be elevated to a science or reduced to a how-to book. Should you doubt yourself, “The Experts’ Guide to the Baby Years” will handily advise you on how to pack a diaper bag, choose a name, locate your inner patience, and trust your instincts as a new parent.

With battalions of therapists, tutors and coaches we have now commandeered most aspects of our children’s existence. Do we really mean to intrude on their fantasy lives, on their stories and societies and civilizations and — most critically — their first steps toward a sense of self?

It’s an ill-kept secret that having children can be hazardous to your health. They decimate your bank account, your furniture and your immune system. Your nerves, your abs, your attention span will never be the same. Even their dietary habits undermine ours; a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that those of us who live with children eat more fat and more saturated fat. But if on the surface they seem to have invaded our world, I’d argue we’ve actually colonized theirs. Surely something other than affluence and overthinking is at work here. Is it just a little bit possible that we’re using our kids as an excuse not to grow up?

Participatory parenting happens after all to make for participatory childhood. Which would explain why cupcakes are back in vogue; why the grown-ups are reading “Harry Potter”; why my wardrobe is indistinguishable from my 13-year-old’s. Where children once counted as miniature adults, adults today look like outsized children. Somewhere along the way we repealed the generation gap. It’s easy to share playlists, but we’re not supposed to like their music, remember?

There are perfectly legitimate reasons for our appropriation; in the history of
innovation, macaroni and cheese is up there with interchangeable parts. And innovation is the force of the day. The grown-ups have lost the corner on savvy and adept. When Silicon Valley needs wise men, it summons teenagers — who presumably don’t roll their eyes as they do in our household, when called upon to open the unopenable file. The evolutionary psychologist Bruce Charlton terms it “neoteny”; in a climate of vigorous change, the advantage goes to the flexible-minded. Immaturity is a gift. The adult is useless.

One baby sitter drove the point home in an interview with The Times. “The parents are not going to know what to do with all that stuff,” predicted 18-year-old Bonnie Huarotte, turning up her nose at Rockwell’s design. “They’ll need the attendant.”

The good news is that if I can’t get the kids to download the pesky file, I can throw a temper tantrum. The bad news is that we might just need an expert to remind us to
leave the childhoods to the children.

Stacy Schiff is the author, most recently, of “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America.” She is a guest columnist.