There's a peculiar kind of invisibility that comes with being small. I first noticed it at my aunt's dinner party, aged seven, when the adults spoke about me as if I weren't there, their voices floating above my head like weather patterns I couldn't quite reach. "She's getting so big," they'd say, while I sat silently examining the intricate patterns on my party dress, wondering if being "big" would finally make me visible.
Childhood is often painted in the soft watercolors of nostalgia – ice cream summers and butterfly chases, skinned knees and bedtime stories. We wrap it in tissue paper and preserve it like a precious artifact, this supposedly golden age of innocence and joy. Yet beneath this carefully curated tableau lies a more complex reality, one that every child navigates but few adults remember: the profound paradox of being simultaneously treasured and dismissed.
Consider the daily theater of childhood: we dress children in their finest clothes, then scold them for getting dirty. We tell them to speak up, then silence them when their words become inconvenient. We encourage their dreams, then remind them to be realistic. Like precious dolls in a glass house, they are meant to be seen but not heard, cherished but not necessarily understood. The contradictions pile up like building blocks in a playroom.
The world of children operates under its own peculiar physics. Time stretches like taffy during school hours but vanishes in play. Emotions run as deep as oceans but are often dismissed as puddles. A child's grief over a lost toy might be met with adult amusement, their fierce opinions about dinner vegetables treated as mere whimsy. Yet these same adults will reminisce endlessly about their own childhood sorrows, suddenly validating decades-old hurts they once dismissed in their offspring.
Perhaps most perplexing is the constant reminder that childhood is the "best time of your life" – a statement that carries its own weight of expectation and guilt. How does one properly enjoy what they're constantly told they're supposed to be enjoying? It's like being handed a delicate piece of happiness and then being criticized for holding it wrong.
The playground itself becomes a microcosm of this complexity. Here, children must master the intricate social choreography of friendship and rivalry, all while under the distant gaze of adults who intervene only when the drama becomes too visible. They must learn to navigate hierarchies, alliances, and betrayals worthy of a corporate boardroom, yet do so with the emotional toolkit of someone who still believes in the tooth fairy.
Technology has added new layers to this already complex landscape. Today's children are digital natives expected to master coding before cursive, yet simultaneously sheltered from the very world they're so adeptly navigating. They are told they're too young to understand while being bombarded with information at unprecedented rates. The glass dollhouse now has Wi-Fi, but the fundamental paradoxes remain.
Education, too, reflects this duality. We push children to excel, to compete, to achieve, all while insisting they enjoy their carefree years. They must somehow be both ambitious and relaxed, focused and playful, exceptional and normal. It's a high-wire act performed without a net, and the audience seems more interested in the spectacle than the spectator.
Yet within these contradictions, children develop remarkable resilience. They learn to read the subtext of adult interactions, to navigate the space between what is said and what is meant. They become skilled translators of the adult world while maintaining their own rich internal landscapes. Like anthropologists in their own homes, they study the curious behaviors of these larger beings who simultaneously protect and perplex them.
The truth is, being a child is sophisticated work. It requires constantly adjusting to a world designed by and for adults, while maintaining the wonder and authenticity that adults claim to cherish. Children must be natural enough to be charming but controlled enough to be acceptable. They must be innocent but not naive, curious but not disruptive, unique but not too different.
Perhaps it's time we acknowledged that childhood isn't simply a prelude to real life but a complex reality in its own right. The child isn't just an unfinished adult but a complete being navigating an often contradictory world. Their experiences, emotions, and perspectives are not mere rehearsals for future living but life itself, being lived with an intensity that adults have often forgotten how to feel.
After all, in the glass dollhouse of childhood, the most important eyes watching aren't those peering in from outside, but those looking out from within, trying to make sense of a world that simultaneously celebrates and constrains them. And perhaps that's the greatest paradox of all – that in this supposedly simplest time of life lies some of our most complex human work.
* a childrens day special from my end
