Old Enough to Know

Children are never too young to be protected from ignorance

Source: Royalty free image by CatsWithGlasses on Pixabay

Since the UK Prime Minister announced the Government’s plans to ban social media for under-16s, there’s been renewed talk about “age appropriateness”. This is a topic that has wider implications than online activity, and one that comes up regularly in my supervisory practice, often on themes to do with sex and death, as illustrated by these fictional examples:

• A play therapist told me that six-year-old Jessica said her hamster looked weird and didn’t want to play, like he used to. She thought she had done something to upset him, because she doesn’t want to play with her friends when they upset her. The therapist knew from Jessica’s father that her beloved pet had died, but because he thought she was “too young to understand”, he’d substituted the hamster with a replacement and said nothing, leaving her confused and inadvertently upsetting her anyway.
• I heard that nine-year-old Elsie believed she was cursed because she’d had unkind thoughts about a girl at school. The curse was evidenced by hair sprouting on her “privates” and blood in her knickers. Elsie’s devoutly religious parents had withheld consent for her to attend sex education classes throughout junior school because “she’s too young to know about that sort of thing”. Now she’s confused about her changing body and the power of magical thinking.
• Another therapist was told that her 10-year-old client’s grandfather had died. She’d heard a lot about him in sessions, because Ishmael and he had enjoyed a close relationship before Ishmael was taken into care. Professionals decided that he was “too young” to attend the funeral and so he didn’t get to say goodbye to his grandfather, whom Ishmael now believes is haunting him.
• Daisy, 15, downloaded TikTok without her parent’s consent. When they checked her phone, they discovered she’d shared provocative images and pretended she was 16 in conversations with people she didn’t know. Her parents confiscated all of her electronic devices because they think she is “too young to be engaging in that sort of thing”. Daisy feels “slut shamed” by her parents and determined to access social media regardless of their wishes.
• Alec, 19, died by suicide after a long period of depression. An offer of family therapy has been accepted by Alec’s parents, but they don’t want his 16-year-old brother Miles, who has a learning disability, to attend because he’s “too young to understand about mental illness” and they haven’t told him the true cause of death. Miles worries that he will die too.

Anecdotes I've encountered similar to these fictional examples make me incredulous at adults who withhold information from children and adolescents about their lived realities, leaving them not-knowing. Not-knowing is an unbearable position, and so, inevitably, unknowns are filled with worry or fantasy, and then negative self-belief manifests as “acting-out” angry behaviours or “acting-in” withdrawal and despair.

• “It’s my fault my hamster is unhappy – now I am unhappy too”
• “I’m cursed because I’m unkind – and I hate myself”
• “I’ve let my grandfather down – because I’m a terrible person”
• “I’ve been slut-shamed – I’ll open a secret account to talk to boys”
• “I’m worried I will die, like my brother – It should have been me who died not him”

For me, questions come to mind about what is unknowable or unthinkable and by whom. It isn’t usually children, equipped as they are with innate curiosity. I have engaged in countless facts-of-life-and-death conversations in therapy sessions with young people of all ages. Some might wonder if this is beyond my remit, but I would argue not. The therapy room can be a safe space where young people bring their worries, fears, fantasies and unknowns to be thought about and made sense of.

So, I would explore ideas about death with six-year-olds, share facts about puberty with nine-year-olds, create death rituals with 10-year-olds, discuss social media and online image sharing with 15-year-olds, and explain the characteristics of mental illness to 16-year-olds. And I would do so confidently and candidly. If children are old enough to be curious about something, my view is that they are old enough to be given honest answers. They can manage information about sex and death if an example of being able to manage those topics is modelled to them. If, on the other hand, information is withheld, they’ll look elsewhere for answers.

They are always old enough for that.