Feedback needed for uni research, please help!

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Hi guys,

I'm a trainee teacher specialising in Early Childhood Studies. I'm doing a presentation about the innocence of childhood next week and would appreciate some views to include in my presentation (I will only quote what is said no nicknames will be used).

What are your thoughts on the protection of childhood innocence and the general life of children today maybe compared with your own?

Feel free to discuss between yourselves, any comments will be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance!

How would you define childhood innocence? How do you think your audience defines it?

Is it believing in the stork? Or the tooth fairy? Or not wearing a stripper outfit for your Yr 6 school leaving do? Not having sex until you are 16? Or not knowing that other people have sex until you're 16?

Do you believe children have one childhood innocence and once you have touched it the whole thing is gone (Lady Bracknell: Ignorance is like a beautiful flower, tamper with it...).

In my own case, I don't think my parents had very different aims to myself: we have wanted our children to be well informed, but to have enough other interests in life not to be obsessively focused on sex/drink/looks at a young age. I have probably done better in this area than my parents as I am better at talking about potentially emotional issues, but other than that I don't think there is much difference.

I think it is vital to protect your childrens innocence for as long as possible because there are so many awful things happening in the world that they should not have to know about at such an early age. Kids today are far more knowing and streetwise than I was at the same age. They don't have the same ability to play independently or to enjoy imaginative play but seem to rely more on games and computers for constant provided entertainment. I think Children can learn a lot from role playing with dolls and enjoying playing with toys but they run the risk of censure from their friends who view such activities as infantile. My son who is now 12 managed to remain quite innocent for longer than I could have hoped really. At the age of 10 he still believed in fairies and built a house for them in the garden, writing them letters every evening (hence started a long summer of me sewing fairy clothes and creating characters and names to write back in tiny little letters) it was lovely but all too rare these days. I think it is easy to forget how easily disturbed and scared children can be by things we think they are immune to because they are exposed to so much more than we were. As parents I think we have a big responsibility to protect our children as much as possible and to make their childhoods full of fun, pleasure and laughter so they can grow up to be stable and effective adults with a zest for life and the ability to be creative.

Thanks these comments are really helpful! And no I don't believe children have one innocence but different children have to take on different responsibilities and gradually lose their innocence at differing times of their lives. 7 year olds who are aware of how little money their parents have or 5 year old who help their parents get dressed because their sick. Having said this the concept of innocence is an adult construction but why? Is it because we know the realities of life and wish that we could be children again?

I'm interested in the general concerns of parents for their children today. Not necessarily related to their loss of innocence but maybe their safety, education, the sexualisation of clothing.

What are your main concerns for your children?

it can be a bit of a thing imposed by parents sometimes when the child is anything but innocent.
Children are certainly better protected than in the Victorian age (except for a few of the very rich). There used to be child brothels in V ictorian London . We don't have that now. There is a myth that we had an earlier age of childhood innocence which presumably suits the agendas of some.

In schools teachers need to be careful to ensure they respect the differences there will be between children and how children even from the same family will mature at very different rates.

My main concern for my dcs (and I suppose it is a kind of loss of innocence) is that they both by age 8 had been diagnosed with a painful and crippling condition. Ds was 4 when it happened to dd and he saw the devastating effect on her: 4 years later he was told he had the same condition. It was the week after the funeral of his best mate's mum- so yes, you could definitely talk about loss of innocence there: all the safe reassuring things we tell our children pulled away from him in one go

But it's not really anything to do with the particular age we live in: these things have always happened and children have always had to deal with them. There is nothing I can do to pretend that life hasn't dealt them a bad hand, or that the pain doesn't hurt; fairies don't really help with this one. All I can do is to try to help them bear it as well as possible- which takes maturity rather than innocence.

My view is that i'll try to preserve my DS's innocence for as long as possible, but when he starts asking questions about life and the world it shows he's ready to learn so i'll try to answer them as truthfully as possible. Clearly he will catch glimpses of the news and hear conversations from other people so i'm under no illusions that we can police everything he sees and hears. All we can do is try to point him in the right direction and protect him as much as we possibly can from the more undesirable elements of life. I suppose i'm viewing this from an educational perspective.

I don't want him growing up around anger and violence, but accept that he needs to know they exist as much as love and happiness do. I don't want him playing with guns, knives and glorifying war, but he needs to know that they exist as much as pens and paper. I don't want to scare the shit out of him by telling him about all the nasty people in the world, but he needs to know they exist and how to avoid them (internet safety etc.) It's pretty daunting when you think about the balance parents need to strike. I don't want to protect my DS so much that he's comparatively naive and knows nothing about life, but i don't want to fill his head with "the world is a bad place" because the world is also an exceptionally good place, with good people.