The average age when you've lost your mental innocence

You always seem very interested in motivations, and delineating all aspects of a situation. Which I appreciate because I am the same way. I want to know the intent, and understand everything! Sometimes makes me sick though, sometimes too much info is a bad thing.

I understand what you mean with respect to romanticism. I personally lost my innocence muuuuch younger than 16 but with trauma people sometimes tend to compartmentalize situations and "forget" about them. I certainly did that. I don't feel violated, because the person who it happened with was very young like myself. I also don't consider myself a victim because what happens happens. I wouldn't want to consider myself one is probably the real reason. Any way, my "personal taste" and intentions is really what I thought the question reflected. And 16 is what I'll stick with. I never had independent thoughts on the matter until that age.

 

Not that it really makes any difference, whether it be watching horror movies too early, supposed influence of violent video games, or another chestnut was the bad influence heavy metal suppsedly was having back a couple decades ago.

Non of it makes a difference, no real infuence at all in the end

 

Thanks for understanding that happily.


My questions are always asking deep things about people and they're very psychoanalytical (if that's a word) because at the core of it all isn't that what creates all the drama behind love and relationships?


This a very Freud of me, but I ask these questions because experiences in our youth ripple in what we do as adults.

So I asked these questions, and the answers, if they are honest and serious, indicate our present day predicaments and future ones as well with respect on how we should raise our children.



For instance I have decided as a direct result of these posts here, that if I have kids the age of 12 is too late for them to not know about what to do if someone tries to flirt with them. I don't want other people, including their peers defining the parameters of what is safe or proper.

I would like my kids to already know how to handle themselves if they found themselves in a bad situation, and I suspect that ignorance disguised as innocence in our modern day society is a hinderance more than it is helpful.

Looks like I disagree with my real life friends (the ones I mentioned I the OP), because their perspective is that they think innocence will keep them safe and informing them of how the real world works would just traumatize one's offspring.

So the balance was to keep them innocent as possible until the average age of when one's peers are likely to expose the non-innocent side of the world to them anyway. It's a very fine balance to get the timing just right.

 

There are so many factors to take into account (parental upbringing, religious beliefs, genetics (male female and personality/character) I for one, would say around 11/12 myself. This is when I started thinking for myself and not just what my parents thought.

 

I think it does make a difference, so we just disagree on this.

Some people have more resiliency than others, but overall I think it does make a difference when I reflect on my own childhood and that of my peers and how they've changed or haven't.

I'm not saying 1 factor alone was solely responsible, but it might've contributed.

And if you've ever played video games online, you can hear the mouths and language used by the kids who are getting pissed off by the trolls....no it makes a difference.

 

I would have to say I truly lost it after I lost my virginity at 18. You don't really get it until you've had sex.

 

I would say mental innocence was lost around 12 or 13. Years before i lost my virginity.

 

I'm not sure if I have ever had a sense of "mental innocence" as far as how it is being defined thus far.

I am still a virgin, but I have always understood opposite sex, and sexual relations for that matter, on a much deeper level than most of my peers.

I still don't know exactly what all that is, as I haven't experienced a developed sexual relationship with anybody, but I believe it is more simple than most people make it out to be...


My "mental innocence" was probably discovered around kindergarten. I had an innocent crush on a girl and I saw her naked in the bathroom at school and I began to think about things between opposite sexes way more in-depth than a child at that age would normally (ie marriage, having children, yada yada - keep in mind I was 6)




Now that I think of it, I recall a time before kindergarten, when i was probably 4 or 5 that I was in a bathroom with a similarly aged girl and we were both naked and noticing our differences.

It's never really been an issue for me - sex and gender - until my peers began noticing their differences and acting on it around the 5th/6th grade (mostly in knee-jerk and awkward ways - which has had a lot to do with my despondence towards having sex). Then I became more boisterous in talking about my girlfriends and whatnot, even though I wasn't having sex with them, I was doing more than my friends...

Interesting topic, as I really haven't thought too much about "mental innocence" in this way - and it makes sense to me as to why I've felt a lot of disconnect in these realms with a lot of people.

 

I think you're right, monk - that preserving innocence isn't protecting them in any way, and is most assuredly more harmful. The tricky problem is how to introduce your children to the idea in a world of so much subconscious sexualization