Kids should be allowed to be kids for as long as we can manage. Too many don’t get the chance to be kids long at all. There’s always something trying to take it away from them, media, merchandisers, abusers, Murphy’s Law. Once that innocence is gone, it’s never coming back.
He sat there, a little irritated that his mom had bothered asking at all, but he held that tiny baby in his arms.
“But you wanted a baby sister!” she called out to him as she walked to the back of the house.
It was a little awkward with that floppy head at first but he settled in. And then he just snuggled her. In that moment, his heart made a little promise that no matter what it was, he’d kick all their asses: the bullies, the mean girls, the jerk boyfriends, they were all going down. No one was gonna take her innocence away like had been done to him. His fourteen year old heart wrapped around her infant one and never let it go.
—Photo APM Alex/Flickr
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We make the mistakes of comparing our childrens childhood to that of our own but todays society, the experiences that our children have, the dangers apparent in todays world and the opportunities for harm and good are so very different. All we have is the duty to protect our children from harm, provide them with boundaries within which they can make their own choices and set good examples for them to follow.