Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and... — C.S. Lewis

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.

Author: C.S. Lewis

Insight: We live in a world that's pretty good at showing kids the darkness early—bullying videos, anxious news cycles, the casual cruelty of social media. But there's something Lewis understood that we've half-forgotten: exposure to hardship without any model of how to face it doesn't make you realistic. It makes you defenseless. The insight isn't that we should hide difficulty from children. It's that we're doing them a disservice if we only do that. Kids absorb the world's meanness anyway. What they need alongside it are stories and examples of people who looked straight at something hard and didn't crumble. Not toxic positivity or pretending pain doesn't exist, but actual models of courage—the kind that's quiet sometimes, that persists, that knows fear and acts anyway. This matters because courage isn't something kids find lying around. It's something they recognize first in stories, in history, in the people around them—and then they can practice it in their own smaller ways. A child who's only seen cruelty responded to with shame or victimhood hasn't learned what's possible. One who's encountered brave knights, in whatever form, has at least seen the choice.

Source: On Three Ways of Writing for Children