keeping kids innocent is wrong, ultimately harmful

8/11/2019 Keeping Kids Innocent is Wrong, Ultimately Harmful

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Keeping Kids "Innocent" Is Wrong, Ultimately Harmful

"Now I really suspect that Grandma is hiding [the newspapers with news about the Great War]. That

would mean the news was so bad she did not want me to read it. But knowing the truth is better than

imagining the worst."

!ean ittle# If I Die Before I Wake: The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona Macgregor # part o$ the %ear&anada series that teaches history and culture to children through story telling

They grow up so quickly, don't they? How often have you heard that? Or maybeyou have said it yourself.

Too many parents try to protect their children from the cruel world out there by

hiding truth and reality from them. There will be time for them to learn that later,

when they are old enough and mature enough to handle it.

The trouble is, by the time the parents believe their kids are old enough to handlethe bad news about life, the kids have usually already e!perienced the bad part.

They are past the time when they needed the input. The parents failed in their

most important function, to raise their children to know how to handle what theyface in their lives.

"ompared with most mammals and primates, humans have an e!tremely long

period of childhood. #ature has accommodated this by allowing for the slow

development of a child's body. $irls don't begin to become fertile %able toprocreate& until they are old enough that their prehistoric female ancestors were

ready to be mothers. imilarly with boys becoming se!ually mature.

The frontal lobes of the brain, the parts that help us tell right from wrong, good

from bad, and that help us to think our way through serious problems do not fullydevelop until well on into the teen years.

(y the age that adolescents become se!ually mature, most of them know almost

nothing about what is happening inside their bodies %how the hormones will affectthem, not )ust the mechanics of reproduction as studied in school&, how the same

is affecting those of the opposite se! and how they can and should manage their

strong feelings of se!ual attraction toward others.

* recent study in the +nited tates showed that fully half the college studentssurveyed knew almost nothing about how to avoid pregnancy. oes that seem

unbelievable? -t isn't to those college students.

*t the adolescent age of their kids, many parents are saying to other parents that

http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/jeanlittle.htm





ids are interested in se! too young these days, and - don't want my kid to behaving se! until he %or she& is much older and can handle the responsibility. That

age is not /0 years. (ut kids %about /12& have their first se!ual e!periences bythat age. (y age /3 or /1, virtually half of them have had se! at least once.

4arents are in denial, unless a daughter becomes pregnant. Then they blame the

daughter, or T5, or movies, or their family doctor, )ust about anyone.

There is no such thing as an age when a child is too young to learn about mattersof adulthood. That's the whole purpose of childhood, for them to learn about being

adults before they actually get there and have to live it.

However, there is a secret about conveying adult information and knowledge to

children. -t's not what you tell them so much as how you tell them. 6ike any kindof communication, the message must be formed in such as way that the receiver

understands it and can absorb it. 4referably that the young person has understood

the message enough that he or she can process how to incorporate it somehowinto his or her life.

* child can know the intricacies of se! without actually feeling the need to have it

with another person. There are consequences. One is pregnancy and that includesbecoming a parent long before the adolescent is ready to become a parent, to

raise, provide for and protect a child.

Teens have learned how to avoid having intercourse by having se! in such a way

that pregnancy is not possible. One method for each gender is cunnilingus %for thefemale& or fellatio %for the male&. These do open the possibilities for Ts

%e!ually Transmitted iseases&, including H45 infection, even throat cancer orH-5. The answer is not to hide these possibilities, but to discuss them so theadolescent has a chance to understand the risks.

Those who do not know make the most mistakes. The consequences of those

mistakes often affect a person for the rest of his or her life. The knowledge young

people need is not )ust about se!. -t's about everything they may be e!posed to intheir lives, including at school, on the streets, on televison and on the internet.

-nnocence in childhood becomes ignorance in adulthood. -nnocent children suffer

great disadvantages. -gnorant adults become victims of all kinds of problems. Tomake life worse, ignorant adults who received little help from their parents tend tobe shy about asking for help from others when they are adults. -n other words,

ignorant adults tend to remain ignorant, often to the e!tent of refusing to learnwhen they have the opportunity.

There are no advantages for a child to remain innocent. There are huge and



harmful disadvantages for an adult to be ignorant about the realities of life. One of those disadvantages is that ignorant adults tend to be more fearful of more

different things than those who are knowledgeable. They also tend to lackempathy and often find it hard to be sympathetic. These are critically important

characteristics we want in the generation that will soon run our country.

-f you want a child who never grows up, get a dog or cat. -f you are the parent of

a child, help that child become a well balanced and responsible adult. -t's theprimary life responsibility of every parent. Talk about it.

(ill *llin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today'sEpidemic Social Problems, a book of easy and ine!pensive solutions to

seemingly impossible problems. He gives advice through his web site and hisinternet group. To learn more about these go to http788billallin.com

http://billallin.com/

http://billallin.com/

keeping kids innocent is wrong, ultimately harmful

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