A to Z Challenge: I is for Innocence

I feel like teaching has helped me to learn a lot about what I would like to do as a parent with my own children. I've seen how great of an impact a parent can have on a child. One thing I've learned to treasure from my six years of teaching is innocence. Today I is for innocence.

One thing I hope to do for W is provide him with a home environment that allows him to have his childhood innocence for as long as he can. Working in elementary education has given me the opportunity to spend my days with many wonderful children. So many of them have had to grow up too quickly and it makes me sad for them.

I know I will need to protect W's home environment to allow him to be a child. While I don't plan to hide him from the realities of the real world, I also do not believe that he needs to know every little detail of every little thing that goes on in the world around him. A student was recently telling me about all of the news footage she had watched about the recent tragedies in Japan. I have no problem with her being aware of what the Japanese people are going through, but she was describing in detail the destruction she had seen on the news and it was very concerning to her. As a parent, I wouldn't want W to have seen so much that he was worried about his own safety.

I know I will not be able to protect him from everything and that he has to live with an understanding of reality but I want him to be able to be a child for as long as he can because the world is a tough place these days. I hope that he will find joy in simple things like coloring, pretending to be a pirate with a ship made out of a cardboard box, and making sandwiches for lunch together. I hope to foster creativity and imagination while letting him have time to just be a kid. He has the rest of his life to be an adult.