Parenting Tips - The Challenge Of Protecting Childhood Innocence
The excerpt below is from a series of articles about parental concerns
Innocence: It is an absence of guilt; harmless; freedom from evil; lack of worldly experience; not recognizing the harmful intentions of other. This is the definition of innocence according to the Encarta Dictionary. These days it’s difficult to find true innocence in the world, but if you have ever watched a month-old puppy sleeping or gazed into the eyes of a toddler-aged child you can still see it. At that age, everything is new and exciting, not routine and boring such as for the rest of us who have become jaded over the years.
Little kids, especially barely verbal kids, watch and listen to everything. All kinds of things fascinate them; the graceful motion of goldfish, the gentle waving of tall grasses, the color yellow, and the bouncing of a beach ball. All the things adults take for granted, toddlers find endlessly amazing. They believe everything we tell them; they have no concept of lying, or even fanciful jest. Myths, childhood legends, make-believe, wonderful fantasies of all sorts and even bogeymen that lurk in their closets at night are all real to them. Kids believe it just because we say it. Like the sleeping puppy, their total absence of guile seems to last such a short time! This innocence seems to vanish within the first few years of their lives, never to be reclaimed.
What takes the place of childish innocence? We can only hope that it is wisdom. As toddlers learn the ways of the world, this knowledge can sometimes be disappointing. There’s no such thing as Santa Claus or Superman. The tiny puppy grew into a big dog that bites if its ears are yanked. Grandmother died - she isn’t “sleeping.” And there are monsters, but they don’t live in the closet at night; they are teachers and babysitters and the nice man next door who has some strange pictures of naked kids.
Read the full article here: Parenting Toddlers
