Here is where we hear all of the virtues of children, including imaginary ones. But Jesus wasn't sentimental about children. As James Breech writes, Jesus knew they could be perverse, and he says so when he describes children who get themselves in a snit. So in Luke 18 Jesus doesn't say how sweet children are. Not a word about the trusting look in a child's eye.
Infants are needy people.
Likewise, in first-century Pales tine they are lowly people. They don't count for anything. Children are like the tax collector in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, which comes just before this text in chapter 18. Jesus tells the parable of the lofty Pharisee who got humbled and the lowly tax collector who got exalted by God. Then he says, Look.