Herself asked me this question this morning. “Well, it’s an old fashioned way of saying imagination or it could mean ‘like’ as in ‘do you fancy a cake?'” “What does it mean when they say at school that everyone fancies J?” They’re SIX, six, is this normal?
I see that the Irish Times using its extensive research arm (SOURCE: The Voice of Young People – A Report on Attitudes to Sexual Health, commissioned by Pfizer Healthcare), reports on the matter thus: “Despite the introduction of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) programme in schools, the study found that children still learned about sex outside the classroom, mainly from friends and older siblings. Most young people surveyed were critical of the sex education offered in schools, saying it was often “too little, too late.” Well since, it appears to be needed from age 7, I’m not hugely surprised.
The organ of record continues: “The primary fear for parents appears to be that they might shock their child or ‘steal their innocence’, something they are very mindful to protect,” the report said. What innocence?
I think this is true of a lot of things parents “shield” their children from e.g. the existence of Father Christmas. I had a serious discussion about how, perhaps, it was OK to tell secondary age children that he didn’t exist because “hopefully they will have twigged by then”. These are children who are in many cases already going through puberty! It seems to be mainly for the parents’ sake frankly.
Are parents/teachers preserving their innocence or ignorance I wonder? The latter being quite a dangerous commodity. As for Santa Claus – I reckon most 8 year olds have twigged (if not younger), they just keep schtum in case the flow of pressies dries up.
I was going to make the ignorance/innocence distinction too. I think children often know things (possibly in a garbled way) while remaining innocent of their darker or more serious dimensions. i’m sure that was true of our generation too. Doesn’t make it any easier to deal with now we are the adults and have organised all these concepts in a rather different fashion.
What very wise comments this has inspired…
Well, it was “normal” in my day, and I’m much much older than you!
I well remember sitting holding hands with the little boy I “fancied” during story time in nursery school.
Are you sure it’s not the word itself that disturbs you. The application of a word from the teenage lexicon to an innocent childish emotion?