Growing us is never easy, but for some children, the job is made much more difficult. Adults who should protect and teach them do neither. Instead, they abuse, abandon, or neglect them in a variety of ways. The children are left to try to figure out how to raise themselves, and how to survive.
Children are not “little adults” in small bodies–they are immature little people who are trying to figure out what it means to be human, to have feelings, to be sexual and to make decisions. Just like adults, they don’t always do it right. But (as the adults seem to say about each other….)
“they did the best they could.”
Listen to the children. Be merciful to them. They have already suffered enough.
Rachel Lynn
1991
