Our kids are stressed out! We enroll them in the finest pre-schools to make sure they are on track to be accepted to Harvard. We get them on the best youth sports teams so that they can get a division 1 scholarships. We start talking about the intricacies of sexuality before they can even tie their shoes. What’s so wrong with childhood innocence? Why are we so intent on putting children on the fast track to adulthood when they are incapable of paying the emotional toll? Life is hard, and being an adult even harder, so why make our children turn grey before they enter junior high? Why hand them adult chisels only to have them carve worry lines on their faces? I’m actually OK with helicopter parents as long as they don’t become gunships enforcing a Peter Pan No-Fly zone.

Adam and Eve had an idyllic life until the snake asked them a question they were ill prepared to answer. Their innocence was stolen, and yet we offer the same forbidden fruit to our children and watch in horror as they suffer from the consequences of eating of the apple, so young.

What I see is unreal

I’ve written my own part

Eat of the apple, so young

I’m crawling back to start

(Alice in Chains)

While we are outraged at shootings, abuse, and sexual exploitation, our anger burns hotter when children are involved. Sadly, as a pediatrician specializing in neonatal medicine, I have seen drug abuse foisted upon fetuses, anger vented on shaken babies, and sexual perversion inflicted on young children. Jesus weeps.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18: 1-6)

What is it about children that takes our outrage to a whole new level?

I think the reason is that we all long for the innocence of Eden and know that childhood is the closest we will ever get to it in this lifetime.

Childhood’s time is Adam and Eve’s time before they left the garden for good and from that time on divided everything into before and after. It is the time before God told them that the day would come when they would surely die with the result that from that point on they made clocks and calendars for counting their time out like money and never again lived through a day of their lives without being haunted somewhere in the depths of them by the knowledge that each day brought them closer to the end of their lives.  (Frederick Buechner)

We seem to cherish children yet ironically seem hell-bent on stealing their innocence.

I have attended hundreds of births. They are usually magical moments where even the most dysfunctional of families seem entranced. All the hostility and anger briefly melt away, and parents who have suffered from extremely bad lifestyle choices find themselves in the presence of a pure, innocent, human life, and seem captivated by thoughts of what could have been. For a brief moment, they are able to peek through the flaming swords and imagine themselves walking hand-in-hand with God in the cool of the morning.

So will you tell me the little things?

What does God look like?

And angels’ wings?

I don’t remember these things.

(Stone Temple Pilots)

Interestingly, they frequently give their babies names such as Hope, Destiny, Heaven, and Joy, as if to fix amulets upon them to ward off the Devil they have already danced with. Subconsciously, they believe that they can redeem their sins by committing themselves to helping these innocent lives avoid the same mistakes they made. A baby represents the chance for them to do it all over again.

I wanna hold you

Protect you

From all of the things

I’ve already endured.

(Staind)

Sadly, a secular materialistic view of the world encourages us to enroll our children in the school of hard knocks because in the end the only degree worth obtaining is in survival and replication. Evolution has no need for innocence because, “There’s no crying in evolution.”

Can’t we just let our kids play house without having to tell them that 50% of them are broken, can’t we just let them pretend to fight dragons before they find out that their fellow man breathes fire? Must we show them the seedier side of life before they have the chance to smell the flowers? We steal Eden from our children and then wonder why they find themselves lost in the wilderness.

Some will say that we shouldn’t coddle our children, but what’s so wrong with chasing clouds, digging to China, or building a cardboard rocket ship to fly far away. Why do we feel the need to make our children worry about financing their dreams of outer space? Why do we insist that we ground their rocket ships until they have undergone adult repairs?

Wish we could turn back time (oh), to the good old days (oh)
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out

We used to play pretend, give each other different names
We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away
Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face
Saying, “Wake up, you need to make money.”

(21 Pilots)

Stone Temple Pilots, “A Song for Sleeping.” Shangri-La Dee Da, Atlantic, 2001.

Staind, “Zoe Jane,” 14 Shades of Grey, Elektra, 2003.

21 Pilots, “Stressed Out.”  Blurryface, WEA/Fueled by Ramen, 2015.

Photo by John Baker on Unsplash