ABSTRACT
The delight taken in recording the charming misunderstandings of children always has an uncomfortable edge. The mythology of young children’s incapacity which is unfolded in the concept of “developmental stages” has a psychology of its own. Fear is always part of the human experience, but for young children it is hand in hand with a sense of guilt, a real sense of inner disturbance. The idea of different stages of understanding and development must be attractive to have such a hold on the literature of childhood. Childhood is a testing time for the discovery of relationships, in which morality plays a central part. The world of young children with its intense and inhibited social relations is one of constant and complex moral decision making. The irony is that the ability to simplify, to reduce experience into a set of limited explanations is something learned by adults but assumed to be true for children.
