When the new neighbors' girl showed up at Jonathan and Amanda Witt's door asking if their 11-year-old daughter could play, Amanda thought nothing of it. Amanda called her daughter and one of her sons and sent them out to get acquainted. The kids played all morning, had lunch together at the Witts' house, then went back outside.
But Amanda's kids soon came running in with an announcement. "Her mother is a lesbian," her 7-year-old son declared.
Amanda grieved not only for the partial loss of her young children's innocence, but also for the girl who brought this unwelcome knowledge into their lives. The girl had cried when she told Amanda's children about her mother, fearing that they would no longer be allowed to play with her.
"Our kids are exposed to all sorts of things through the neighborhood children - including divorce, chronic lying and alcoholism," Amanda said. "On two separate occasions, my kids have come inside upset because a friend was surreptitiously crying after his mother left the family the night before."
That's the kind of situation more and more parents are finding themselves in, often earlier than they had anticipated. The Witts' story illustrates the difficulty of preserving children's innocence in a culture that seems eager to destroy it.
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