[@dontbopthebunny reply: Will you give another example of what you mean, please?]
I can do my best. I don't know if you are just looking for simple examples. I don't think this is a simple one-to-one direct causation thing, where there are simple rules you can make for what is or isn't appropriate to discuss with kids when and if you follow them your kid will grow up mentally healthy and if you don't you've traumatized them forever.
But, for example, when I was in sixth grade I had a friend for the first half of the schoolyear who was in trouble.
I don't even remember her last name at this point, and I was an incredibly sheltered eleven-year-old. So I genuinely cannot tell you what was going on. I can tell you something wasn't right. Something with an older boyfriend and her divorced parents and stepdad? Something awful that I did not understand and did not know how to communicate.
Something she didn't tell a lot of people about, because it was a secret.
And I can't tell you how it ends. I don't know what happened to her. She disappeared from school after winter break and never came back.
I can tell you that on the two occasions I tried to talk to adults about it during our friendship, their first instinct was to protect me at the exclusion of her. The reaction was very much one of, whatever she is telling you, you shouldn't be learning about that, and it doesn't sound safe for you to be her friend, and I don't know if she's a good influence, and I am scared for you - the one who isn't being abused and is so sheltered she doesn't know how to recognize even the most basic signs about her friend. I'm not even sure they recognized this was probably some kind of abuse situation.
All they heard was an eleven-year old bringing up topics that sound like they might have something to do with sex or drugs and that's inappropriate. You're too young for that, and your friends are too, so if they are talking about it they are bad friends.
But here's the thing! Not only was she in more danger because of adults felt more inclined to protect this wealthier girl from a stable family at this other girl's expense, I was in more danger too! I had no idea how to even think of what she told me. I barely understood sex existed. And my understanding of dangerous adults was entirely based around relatively useless Stranger Danger training. Because adults felt inclined to warn me of the relatively unlikely danger of some random person asking me into a van, but not the much more likely and actively present danger of possibly my friend's parents being sexual predators or abusers of some kind.
If I hadn't been made to feel like I was maybe inviting Satan into my life by even knowing what sex was, maybe I could've better understood what my friend was trying to tell me. Maybe I could've better asked for help. And if the adult community around me had been more focused on listening to children and less on "protecting" them, maybe they could've actually protected someone.
My genuine feeling is that if a kid is old enough to ask, they are old enough to be given an honest answer (at a level they can understand). Even if the answer is sad, scary, or even traumatizing. I think it's fine to say, "the answer is scary, would you like to know, or would you just like to know Mom has it handled and it will be okay?" - and if the kid insists on knowing, try to tell them in safe and nonjudgmental environment.
We actually put children at an incredible disadvantage by labeling them "innocent and pure". Children, thank goodness, are no such thing. Children are feral little creatures who were born to survive. When I worked in daycare the kids favorite game was eating babies - they would stick dolls in the toy oven and microwave, they would SET IMAGINARY TABLES AND HAVE IMAGINARY FEASTS with an infant doll as the main entree. They thought this was hilarious.
You are not going to be able to keep trauma from your children. You are not going to be able to keep your children from trauma. You can only choose how much support you give them through trauma.
I also feel like sometimes we generate trauma by trying to separate ourselves, our society, and our children from their fleshy mortal reality. Even secular people in America like to conceptualize a person as having a kind of True Moral self, the SuperEgo is the Ideal You, that you must strive for. The "temptations" of the flesh as things to be overcome. Hunger, violent urges, lust, illness. These are external forces acting on us, not regular features of being human. Not just, like, things. That we feel. That are normal. That, yes, we need to deal with and not turn into problems for other people, but are not themselves things we need to be "protected" from experiencing or knowing about or talking about.
But the hide and deny and lie and "protect" version of teaching kids about these concepts - like foreign invaders instead of native features - hurts kids. If your kid is not supposed to know things they know, not be curious about things they are curious about, not think the things they think or feel the things they feel, they are going to be traumatized by their own normal thoughts and feelings. You generated the trauma where there was none.
All you're doing by telling your kid that Fido moved to a nice farm upstate where he's happy is arresting their development, denying them the chance to learn how to conceptualize the world as it is, and how to manage and care for themselves in it.
Kids are violent. They bite and push and shove. Kids are sexual. Sometimes infants get boners. (I have seen a one-year-old's boner while changing a diaper! It's awkward!!!! It's so awkward!!! But it shouldn't be, because it's natural and it's not sexual in the way adults are sexual. At that age, you ignore it. No need to give a one year old a shame complex). Sometimes toddlers masturbate! And that's a normal thing for them to do! They need to be taught manners about it, but they aren't doing anything wrong. Kids can experience loss and trauma. They get in car accidents, their friends can get cancer, they will experience bad things that are too big for them to deal with.
This isn't me saying "So go out and expose your three year old to the most fucked up shit you can think of." Do not do that. Please still monitor what they're watching, please watch how you talk around them, please still carefully introduce them to ideas at a level they can understand.
This is me saying, I think most of the push to "protect" kids is based around what adults wish wasn't true for them, as if pretending and wishing can somehow make it so for the next generation. If I never tell my kid about abuse, they will get to live in a world where abuse doesn't exist. But that's not what happens! Now they just live in a world where abuse exists and they can't recognize it and are ashamed to ask for help!
And this kind of fragile insulated approach to child-rearing is also just, like, incredibly classist and white. It's not about protecting everyone's sense of safety. No one cared about protecting Ruby Bridges, but now white parents panic about teaching their kids her name. White parents pull their kids out from learning about The Holocaust and slavery. They use the idea of protecting their kids from topics are "scary" or "upsetting" as a way to protect their child's, and so their own, sense of privilege and entitlement. They aren't worried about their kids. They are worried about themselves.
And ironically these kind of guarded tower approaches to childcare can actually create trauma out of the innocuous. Not all discomfort is equal. Yeah, it'll probably be a bit awkward for everyone when your kid asks where babies come from, but that's certainly going to be less traumatic than them learning when they're fifteen and pregnant.
"Protect the children" is far too often a dogwhistle that means anything from
1) I want to be able to control my children through shame
2) I want to be able to plug my ears and ignore systemic injustice
3) I want to oppress this group of people and can exploit the idea of children to do so
4) I want to protect myself from my children's judgment
5) I myself have not healthily come to terms with the ideas and realities I am now expected to guide my children through, and I do not want to work on myself
Taking care of children is obviously a hugely important thing to do. And we're only just figuring out what is and isn't good for them. We are so new to actually learning the best practices for raising safe and healthy kids.
IDK. If you're going to study how to rear healthy human children, I think you first need to acknowledge what a human is, and accept that with compassion and understanding. And a human is a hungry, sometimes horny, complex social animal, mortal and flesh as all animals are.
Honestly I think coming to terms with that reality, that we are physical and irrational and one day we will die, is also a huge trauma we need to cope with as a society across all aspects of life. Not just child-rearing. But how are your kids supposed to learn to best navigate that reality if you yourself cannot face it?
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