Recently the tragic history of a ten-year-old has made the news which has caused an uproar on both sides of the divide that seems to have currently afflicted our nation. But putting this divide aside, I would just like, for a moment, to remember what it was to be a ten-year-old girl.
This is a golden age. Probably the best year of childhood before the weight of growing up begins to bear down on one’s life. Clothes are something to be thrown on and played in. One’s only fashion sense revolving around which princess or cartoon movie figure might be featured on them. One’s dolls still have a life that imagination can bring alive as do one’s stuffed animals. While they are still toys, they border on the real with stories revolving around their stuffed contours and plastic faces. A swing set is a rocket ship to Mars, base for an intense game of tag, or simply a place to swing higher than your friend.
A ten-year-old is old enough to make some decisions for herself, but young enough to still accept the rules of the adults around her. Birthday parties can be filled with silly games, a flaming cake and presents from one’s friends and all involved are content. School is simply accepted. with recess filled with games of dodge ball, jump rope, and monkey bars.
But mostly this age is approaching the last years before puberty sets in with all the emotional complications that involves, not to mention the handling of a new monthly arrival. Life is suddenly bound with strictures that did not exist before. One’s body does strange things, and one is either behind the norm or ahead of it ---- never in the right place. Adulthood is suddenly becoming real, something to be yearned for and rejected at the same time. There seem to be no simple pleasures any more as our stuffed animals become no more than that, and the dolls are left in the closet to their own devices.
To force this part of growing up on a young girl before its time is the worst crime of all. Ten should be left to its own pre-pubescent pleasures, unaware of the realities of the adult female world that lies ahead. To force this on a child with all the resulting problems, problems that should not ever be part of her life, is the crime at which we should all stand aghast.