Let children be children

When I was six years nine months old, my mother got me into a church choir. For about seven years after that, I had the identity of 'choirboy' forced onto me - without ever having had any desire for this role. Attendance was required for rehearsals and services as 'choirboy' four times every week throughout the years excepting when my family went away on holiday.

When I was 8½ years old, I was moved from a friendly, pleasant primary school to a fee-paying, repressively authoritarian, academic achievement-fixated public school. For a period of three years and two school terms, I was forced to spend most of my waking day five days a week, excepting holidays, at this place, in the role of 'public schoolboy', as well as having to do homework every night and at the weekend. I never asked for or desired this role, from which I was powerless to escape, any more than I wanted or needed the 'choirboy' role.

Most people in this world seem to have identities imposed upon them in childhood.

In my opinion, children generally want to live their lives simply as children.

What is it with adults, that they feel the need to force a role onto children, so that they can't just live a happy, carefree childhood?