Is our innocence more valuable than our safety?

Innocence is something truly valuable in life because once it’s lost, it’s gone forever. Our childhood and teenage were full of excitement and the quest to learn something new was heightened because of our innocence. Though in those early days, we longed to grow up and be free to take life decisions, now we just want to live another simpler day from childhood to escape from stressful situations and the same mundane decisions.

Do you remember the first time you had a crush in school?

It is definitely something we will never forget because that feeling is special and will never come back. We did not have a thousand questions running in our minds while we were stealing glances with our first love, but only the adrenaline of doing something new and the jittery butterflies in the stomach for every special moment.

Honestly, I would do anything to bring that feeling back. I would want the same excitement I felt when I first walked into a beach and watched the sunrise as the cold waters ran over my toes. I would want the feeling of sitting on a rollercoaster and turning my stomach inside out. I would want to watch Mickey Mouse turning the wheel, Barbie changing her clothes magically, Cinderella losing her slipper and falling in love, Snow-white getting lost and meeting her prince charming, and Harry Potter entering Hogwarts like it was the first time that made me believe in magic and hope.

I want to go back to those school excursions when having a large group of friends and sharing food was a flex, and to the times when we even fought to be paired up with our friends to sit on the school bus together. I would want to be a child who runs around in the sun not worrying about getting tanned. I would want to play cricket with the boys and ‘soppu saaman’ with the girls. I would want to re-enact the ‘Rescue Rangers’ with SPD and Ninja Force morphers and pretend to save drowning ants from dangerous dragonflies. I would want to stand on my childhood home’s terrace and scream songs so Karthick can hear us.

It just feels like all I crave is happiness for the little things and being carefree from the complexities and dangers of the world.

But, I could only dream of the cherished past and the treasure of these golden memories and only pity the children now. No, I’m not jealous but only feeling sad realizing all the happiness they will never get to experience. While I have to credit technology for catching them up with world trends and making them fast learners and on the other side is the actual necessity to not be innocent. Looking at recent news of child abuse and grooming, it’s a mother’s worst fear to let their child out of their vision. It’s disheartening to digest the fact that you can’t trust anyone with your child, even your most trusted family members. It would also be ignorant to think that a mother can look after her child throughout the day. So, do we really think that keeping a child innocent and in the darkness of all things bad is really the right thing to do?

In these absolute dangerous times, there should always be a trade-off between imparting sex education to your child from a young age and still keeping their innocence and childhood intact. It’s a rather thin line that defines the child’s choices. She could be naive and you could protect her throughout or she could be knowing the dangers and be brave and proactive in protecting herself from harm. But, somehow we want the child to have a balance of both which is rather specific and very difficult to attain. There is no ‘right way’ of doing this but a child’s safety comes first and so we might incline to teach them about the bad elements in our society.

Do you know what this could do?

I was talking to my father about this and he told me this. When you teach children about good and bad touches or about protecting yourself when strangers offer you something or being strong in saying NO to anyone who might be using you for the wrong purposes, you are also teaching the child the existence of bad people in the society who intend to do harm. In the process of learning to be safe and proactive, the child might develop trust issues and problems with developing attachments with actual good people. But, we do not have a way to find out if a person is bad or not until he’s caught guilty.

So, should we trust anyone at all or our life is all a gamble and left to fate?

I particularly feel sad for the generations to come and the young parents who are going to make these decisions. A small reminder for those parents that it’s okay to make mistakes because there is no ‘correct’ way and only ‘trial-and-error’ hoping that we’re doing the right thing.

If you’re a parent reading this, I hope you make choices that feel right to you. It’s okay if people don’t agree to your parenting style since they won’t be around when your child is in trouble. But, my only request is to protect them and pamper them and give them the childhood they deserve because life won’t be the same once they know the dark side.

#mobiles #generationz #childhood #technology #innocence #kids #genz #toys