“So the line had stuck in my head. “Sex,” I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or girl, and “sin” made Tante Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing.
At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.
“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said.
I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.
“It’s too heavy,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load.
It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”
We are asking our children to carry loads that are way too heavy for them.
They should not be forced, as children, to see and feel the world through the lens of adults.
Innocence is worth protecting and worth fighting for.
We need to do our part as parents and caregivers to carry certain things for them until they are old enough to bear the load.
I knew I had read this before in a book that Corrie Ten Boom wrote. I was thinking something similar to your thoughts in this post.
I wrote this this morning:
We own several books. Some are “kids’ books,” some are for “older kids” and others are for “adults”. For many years I have been disappointed that some people refer to pornographic material as “adult”. There’s nothing “adult” about pornographic material. It should be called “evil, abusive and destructive” because it is.
It seems obvious to me that we should protect children from being hurt and abused. As a mother, this was so obvious to me as soon as I knew I was pregnant for the first time. I was “instinctively” protective of my pre-born child. This never went away. Ever since then my “Mom” button has been “on”. Phones, computers, lights, cars, microwaves, can all be turned off. But I have not been able to turn my “Mom button” off.
It hurts children to not tell them the truth, about God, about themselves and about others. Not everyone and everything (TV, media, songs) tells us or children the truth. Some things are outright lies and I think that we should call lies lies.
It’s confusing to children (and others) to call an orange an orange one day and a banana another day. Confusion is hurtful to children.
MaryAnn,
Thank you for your insights.
Being a parenting instructor, it is hard to get parents to understand that some information is too heavy for kids, even adolescents to hear. Against popular opinion, 18 year olds are not adults, neither are 21 year olds. Research is showing that the human brain is not fully developed until a person’s mid 30’s. Kids are being exposed to so much sex, violence, and hatred at younger and younger ages due to technology, and a lot of parents seem to be oblivious to the impact it can have on a developing mind.
There is so much going on in our world that it is critical that parents talk to their kids about certain topics, but the important part is that parents have the awareness to share age-appropriate information with them. Corrie’s father had a lot of wisdom, and knew that she was not old enough to carry the true understanding of sex sin. In our current society, protecting our kids from such information is almost impossible if parents do not control the adult information that flows into the home on a constant basis through televisions, computers, smartphones, music, video games, etc. It almost seems as if it is becoming acceptable to expose kids to adult themes at young ages.