I don't think childhood should be a time of carefree innocence
A lot of people want their children to grow up in a happy, carefree environment and bring them up to see the world as a
Disney movie. I don't want to. If I have a child, I want to show them the good AND bad in the world. I want them to see
the beauty of the world much (like most parents would), but on top of that, I want to expose to them how cruel and vicious the world can be and teach them to cope. I want them to enjoy playing in the sun, as well as learning to fight in the darkness.
I don't think children should grow up in playful, carefree innocence. I want the world to batter them a bit, so that they become more resistant as they grow older. I don't want them to grow to be stone cold and hard as rock, but I want them to grow some callouses. I don't want to defer telling them how horrible the world can be until they are adults. Granted, I don't think little kids can cope with a slew of the world's worst horrors slapping them at once. That would be like releasing Terry Crews on a hemophiliac baby. Rather, I want to introduce them to the horrors of the world when it's time.
If you have studied The Catcher In The Rye, you would know how Holden Caufield imagines childhood as kids playing in the rye where the grass hides a cliff and adulthood as a plunge off the cliff hidden by the grass of happiness, and how he wishes to be that catcher who prevents the kids from falling off the cliff. If I were to adapt this metaphor to my wishes, I'd mow the lawn, show my child the cliff and teach him/her how to use scaling equipment as early as possible, so that they descend into adulthood in the least shocking and painful way. In other words, I want to raze their illusion of a happy, carefree world as early as possible, and fill their childhood up with concern (but not anxiety or worry). I don't want to strive to make my kids' childhoods their happiest times of their lives (but if it happens to be, there's nothing wrong with that). I don't want their childhoods to be any better or worse than their adulthood will be. The happiest times of their lives should be up to them to create. I don't want them to consistently reminisce on how their childhood was so happy and how adulthood sucks in comparison. I'm not saying they shouldn't reminisce on childhood at all, but I want them to see the world as it is so that they don't fall into a state of shock and disillusionment when they see the cruelty of the world, like many young adults are today.
Of course, I'm not going to focus on and bombard them only with the negative, because that would make them grow up to be cynical and overly pessimistic, and have little desire to help. I want their childhood to be both tears and cheers so that they have a more realistic approach to real life. I want to train them to understand the world as a place of kindness and cruelty, so that at age 10 or so they can say "No duh" when they are told about how cruel humans can be, rather than just when told how kind we can be. I don't want to train them to be apathetic of the horrors of the world, but I want them to get exposed to it early on. I personally think that anyone who makes their kid's childhood a time of carefree play is doing it wrong.
Is it normal to think childhood shouldn't be carefree?