Glorification of childhood can be found often. Usually the argument goes something like this:
It was so great to be a child! No responsibilities, no taxes, no health concerns. School is much more pleasant than work. So much free time. Just playing and having fun!”
Parts of this can be challenged on factual level (free time, school more pleasant), but I won’t even go that route. Unpacking this would be a waste of time.
Any phase in life has pros and cons. What is so stupid about this way of childhood glorification is comparing the downsides of adulthood with the upsides of childhood while leaving the opposite parts out. Still the majority buys that and looks back to their own time as a minor with rose-colored glasses. Excessive nostalgia casts a distorting veil of self-deception over the memories of such clowns who oversimplify everything.
Twilight Zone
When watching Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone (yes, I typed a capital W at first because of muscle memory recalling TWilight Menu++) I had to switch off the TV and think a lot after the episode “The Incredible World of Horace Ford”. A great story showing the problem visually. The childish and somewhat brilliant (but unworldly) toy designer Horace Ford not only glorifies his childhood but took “Keep your inner child forever” to the extreme. In the end he gets confronted with the obvious reality I mentioned above: any phase in life has pros and cons.
Twilight Zone is TV entertainment. It is a series with elements from fantasy, science fiction and horror. It’s certainly not high literature, but a few episodes shine and go surprisingly deep.
Right of Self-determination + Insignificant Problems
A)I myself aren’t a representative example. I’m completely shielded from any nostalgia-dimmed look on my youth because it was hell. Getting tortured and almost killed with psycho-drugs isn’t the average youth. What can be taken from the story of my own life is the underlying cause for the torture: minors are dependent on decisions made by others. They aren’t allowed to decide for themselves, “for their own good”. Yeah, right.
The power imbalance between minors and adults should really be obvious to anyone. But this is one of the issues that tends to be overlooked when people look at things through their rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. Maybe this is a case of…
IT’S A SECRET
TO EVERYBODY.
…and I just spilled the beans.
B) Sinchen is a peaceful old girl. I detest physical violence. But in my head, in my thoughts, I sometimes feel a tingling sensation. The urge to wipe that smug, condescending, stupid grin—the one that spreads across the faces of many adults when they dismiss a child’s or teenager’s problems as trivial—with a Falcon Punch.
Whether it’s heartbreak, or fear of something or someone at school, a fight with your best friend—none of it is recognized as important. “Grow up first! Then you’ll learn what real problems are.”
Even if some of an eight-year-old’s problems seem unimportant to an adult—and may even be objectively so—for a developing personality lacking coping mechanisms, these problems are real, intense, and seemingly insurmountable.
Your child is counting on your help, on your guidance for coping strategies… and gets a condescending smirk and a snide remark.
As I said, I’m absolutely peaceful, but when I see and hear that, I hear in my head: “FALCON… PUNCH!!!”