Maybe kids need to help them face reality. A rlene wanted to be a sardine. Adults tend to talk about, and talk to, children in a variety of inappropriate ways. One is to presume that children and adults are separate species with entirely different priorities and very little in common. Adults and children are both interested to a highly refined degree in food, sex, death, violence, love, entertainment and money.
Children think hard and deeply about loss, longing and pain.
They notice with considerable attention to detail the ongoing dramas and struggles in the lives of the adults around them. The marvelous fairy tales of the brothers Grimm, gutsy and clearheaded and disturbing, don't find their way into many primary school classrooms these days. The subject tends to bring out the worst kind of sentimental and blindered contemporary storytelling, fraught with angelic fogs and solemn opportunities for moral lessons. But the kids I know are also really interested in pain, blood, decomposition, weird smells and what happens after you're buried underground. All our food was donated.