The Beginning of the End of Innocence

We tried to make M. Edium's transition from day care to Montessori school a smooth one. He continued to go to day care one day a week at first, but then he wanted to stop doing that. There was the awkward conversation with the day care provider when we broke the news that he wouldn't be returning, and we softened the blow by saying that maybe M. Edium would go back for a visit one day this summer.

As I've mentioned before, we'd kept M. Small more or less ignorant of things like guns and war and death and those kinds of things that fascinate older boys, but that pretty much went out the window two weeks into his academic career. Seems like every week now, he gets just a little less innocent. Not long ago, he came home sad about two things. One was that T. Rexes, his very favorite dinosaur, are known to eat other dinosaurs. The other was that all the dinosaurs are in fact dead. Every last one. I don't think that ever really hit him before, even when my parents took him to the science museum and he spurned the dinosaurs that were "only bones," preferring instead to go look for the real ones.

And then he asked me to explain how all the dinosaurs died. I remain partial to the falling-out-of-vogue "impact winter" theory, but how do you explain to a three-year-old the concept of a meteor that causes mass extinctions, especially knowing that we're overdue for a new one? I dodged the issue by giving other theories equal time, and even resisted the temptation to propose my own "failure to brush teeth before bed" theory.

Anyway, these incremental introductions to the real world are giving me a fresh appreciation for the safe (some might say too safe) environment created for the younger children by M. Edium's former day care lady. This was a place where they could spend months talking about space without ever touching on what happened to Challenger, Columbia, or Apollo 1. But I can't resent the older kids at Montessori for "corrupting" him either, as much as I might want to. I should probably count myself lucky that we live in a time and place where a human being can live for almost four years before getting any sense of what a violent, dangerous place the world can actually be.

One thing's for sure, though. That one-day visit back to the day care? I don't think it's happening. Learning about some of this stuff from older kids is one thing. Teaching it to younger ones is another.

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The Beginning of the End of Innocence

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