To ask about the end of innocence for you?

[SundayGirl1]

When did you realise the world’s not all rainbows and unicorns? Watching DD play and feeling sad that one day something will happen to corrupt her little mind. For me it was hearing about poor Jamie Bulger on the news when I was about 10. Although I didn’t know the full details, I remember understanding enough to know there’s evil in the world that I hadn’t understood until that moment. Was there one pivotal moment that stands out for you or was it a more gradual thing?

Child of the '80s here so I'm going to say Chernobyl and the AIDS campaign, same year I also read Z is for Zachariah.

@Skulling I was just about to say the same thing, the Ethiopian famine. I remember thinking about it all and deciding the obvious solution was Santa could help them. I suggested this to Mum and she said he couldn't help because they didn't believe in him. I was saying the people there who were filming this could tell them was she said they didn't know how to write to him. In hindsight I'd say this was after days of pestering questions but that's what I remember. I could not fathom that this so called generous man would allow children to die because they couldn't write yet gave me loads of gifts. I've always felt a certain guilt for my life of relative privilege, I still get this and in my head it stems from this moment.

When James Bulger went missing and was killed by kids older than me. I couldn't comprehend it.

@Astrak have you posted that story elsewhere? I think I heard it before. Truly awful, you poor thing

My parents getting a divorce. They handled it as well as they could have but I still remember the feeling of finding out my family wasn't permanent. It really shattered my world (though I would never tell my parents this and they'd probably use me as an example of how resilient kids are around divorce if it came up).

When I was 5, my mum was hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing by a speeding driver!
Months/years of recovery/rehab. For a brief period when mum was home, my 18yr old cousin on dad's side came to 'help'. Among other things she told me that Santa wasn't real. From that day- I didn't believe 😔

I have no idea why she'd say that, but I later head she ended up in a Thai prison for drug trafficking! That side of the family were very distant/estranged and I've never seen her since.

Gosh so many of you have had such awful chikdhoods 😔 hope you’ve managed to recover 😘

9 when I watched my Granda die. He had a heart attack.

So many sad stories. Life is cruel.
mine was when I was about 4 and my cousin got shot in the face with an air rifle. My dad found him and it traumatised him for years.

Me too x

Oh year I remember that She was the same age as me so I suppose it stuck.

For me, it wasn’t things on the news: they were quite abstract as far as I was concerned, like other things on television. (Some children have to be taught that what they see on TV, or in their dreams, is not real!) It also confused me that adults talked calmly about terrible things like war; I suppose it desensitised me, and I suppose I thought these things only happened in stories.

A defining moment was when a family I knew had a fire in their home that killed some of their children, when I was nine. It the first time something terrible happened to someone I knew. My parents (who weren’t safety fanatics in general) took that very seriously, and got smoke alarms.

Not long after that, I remember my school explaining carefully about the Gulf War in 1991: probably so that children wouldn’t be confused by what they might hear elsewhere, such as “there’s a war on”.

For me watching challenge Anneka on TV the year she went out to the Romanian orphanages, I must've been quite little at the time and it affected me for years, those poor children. Honestly I was very lucky during childhood,I feel so guilty that my son hasn't had it so easy, the night I had to sit him down age 8 and tell him his Aunty had suddenly died I knew his life had changed, she was a single mum to a 4 year old so watching what his cousin went through was hard for him too.

I’m so sorry that happened to you xx

When Men started laughing at me. I was about 10 and knew then I would be raped eventually.

That is quite random that he happened to be in the woods you were using as a toilet! He was likely as shocked as you! 😬

Some more light-hearted ones: the realisation that every school trip would be followed by the duty of having to write about it. (My mum was big on writing diaries as well, but I thought it was a chore.)

Also, starting secondary school in general, homework being more compulsory, the way my parents treated my first day at secondary as such a momentous occasion for them. (I understood when I was older.)

Oh that’s so sad, your poor mum xx

I think this magical time of innocence is a myth. I had deep foreboding about many things from about age 6.

If you grew up blissfully happy until even mid teens, you are exceptionally lucky and highly unusual: most people’s lives are an emotional mixed bag.

Plus, I do think children should not be totally insulated from hardship. They need to see the bad stuff to live good lives. Within reason.

Growing up cosseted is never going to end well, because eventually the scales will fall, and then what??

I was 11, and a little boy we knew was diagnosed with leukaemia. He was 3, and the cleverest little kid. Obsessed with cars. He knew all the parts of a car and what they all did. His parents let him choose how their car was painted - so all the doors were different colours. They let him choose the colours for the house - so they had a brightly coloured patchwork house with a purple door and red windowsills.

He died when he was 3 and a half, in 1988.

I still think about him all the time. Sweet little boy.

Learning about the atomic bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, at around age 11. My mind could not compute that such horrors could be possible. I think it created a shift in me that influenced the rest of my life, it's hard to explain the shift but I think I had a massive sense of 'if this can happen in normal society then I do not relate to this normal society '.

Oh my god. I'm so sorry you experienced that

I grew up in Belfast in the 80s and 90s I had a pretty normal loving family upbringing with the background of breakfast news reporting the latest bomb and gone off or shooting while I ate my cereal. Been evacuated many times and heard gun shots and the panicked aftermath.
I became aware that was not normal at maybe 8 when talking to other kids while I was on holiday. They were fascinated I lived in scary Belfast. As a teen travelling with school in England were confronted by another group of teens calling us horrific names and spewing vitriol when they heard out accents, that was a real shock to the system.

The tragic death of a classmate aged 11. I will never forget the moment I was ushered inside by the Headmaster to a room of my sobbing, brokenhearted friends. 25 years on and that date never goes unnoticed