At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real

Host: The evening air hung thick with mist, curling around the edges of a narrow street where a small bookstore lay half-hidden under the dim glow of a flickering lamp. The rain had just ceased, leaving puddles that mirrored the neon signs from across the road. Inside, the store breathed a quiet warmth — the smell of old paper, cedar, and coffee mingling in the stillness.

Jack sat by the window, a cup of black coffee steaming before him. His grey eyes traced the drizzle sliding down the glass, his brow furrowed in thought. Jeeny stood near the bookshelf, her fingers grazing the spines of children’s books — fairy tales, fables, the lost dreams of growing minds.

The clock ticked slowly, as if afraid to disturb the silence.

Jeeny turned, her voice soft but resolute.
Jeeny: “Ellen Key once said, ‘At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.’ Don’t you think she was right, Jack?”

Jack glanced up, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
Jack: “Depends on what you call real experience, Jeeny. The world’s full of pain. Why throw a child into it before he has the strength to stand?”

Host: The rainlight danced across Jack’s face, casting thin lines of shadow that deepened his features. Jeeny stepped closer, her eyes glimmering with that mix of empathy and defiance he had come to recognize — that spark of unbending faith in the human spirit.

Jeeny: “Because if we shield them too much, Jack, they never learn to feel the world. They become fragile, like glass dolls. They don’t know what to do when life finally cuts.”

Jack: “Or maybe they don’t have to know. Maybe that’s the point of being a parent — to build a barrier between them and the ugliness outside.”

Jeeny: “A barrier? Or a prison? You can’t protect a child from truth. You can only delay it.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly, not from anger, but from memory. Jack leaned forward, his hands clasped, his expression sharpened by the tension in the air.

Jack: “You talk about truth like it’s a blessing, Jeeny. But truth breaks people. Look at the kids who grow up too fast — the ones forced to work, to take care of their parents. You call that ‘real experience’? They don’t bloom, they wither.”

Jeeny: “I’m not talking about cruelty, Jack. I’m talking about reality. There’s a difference. I mean — remember when we were in school, and everyone got those participation trophies? They made us feel like winners, even when we’d lost. But the first time I failed something that mattered, I thought the world had ended. Because no one had taught me that failure is normal, even necessary.”

Host: Jack’s eyes softened for a moment, the steam from his coffee swirling upward like faint ghosts of old regrets. Outside, a car splashed through a puddle, its sound slicing through the quiet like a fleeting reminder of motion in a still world.

Jack: “You think pain is a teacher?”

Jeeny: “I think it’s the only one that stays. Look at the children who grew up during the Great Depression — they learned to share, to value a loaf of bread. Or think of Malala — shot for wanting an education, yet she turned that suffering into strength. Isn’t that what Ellen Key meant? That we should let life’s thorns remind us we’re alive?”

Host: Jack tapped his finger on the table, the rhythm slow, deliberate. He looked at her, and there was both admiration and resistance in his gaze.

Jack: “Maybe. But not everyone turns pain into purpose. For every Malala, there’s someone who breaks and never comes back. You can’t romanticize suffering.”

Jeeny: “I’m not romanticizing it, Jack. I’m saying we shouldn’t deny it. The moment we start pruning all the thorns, the roses lose their scent. Children raised in perfection grow up terrified of imperfection.”

Host: A gust of wind pushed against the window, making the faint chime above the door ring out — soft, metallic, haunting. Jack looked toward it, as though the sound carried a memory. Then he spoke, quieter now.

Jack: “When my father died, I was thirteen. My mother tried to protect me from everything — the funeral, the paperwork, the debt. She told me, ‘You don’t need to worry, son. Just study.’ But when the bills came, when the house almost went, I realized she’d built me a life without edges. And the first time I touched the edge, it cut deep.”

Jeeny: (softly) “That’s what I mean, Jack. She plucked the thorns to spare you, but she left you without skin.”

Host: The silence between them grew heavy, yet not cold. It was the kind of quiet that invites reflection — a pause before the next breath of truth.

Jack: “So what’s your version of good parenting then? Letting your child see war on television, letting them cry when they fall instead of picking them up?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Sometimes, yes. Let them cry. Let them feel. Then show them how to stand again. Not with lies, not with soft illusions, but with your hand in theirs.”

Jack: “You sound like you’re describing a revolution.”

Jeeny: “Maybe I am. A quiet one — in the way we raise our hearts.”

Host: A lamp flickered above them, the light catching the dust in the air like suspended stars. The rain had stopped completely now, leaving behind a soft, damp tranquility. Jack’s jaw tightened — the kind of movement that comes before surrender.

Jack: “So, you’d tell a child the world’s unfair? That people lie, cheat, and die for no reason?”

Jeeny: “Yes. But I’d also tell them that people love, forgive, and rise again — sometimes for no reason too. The two truths must grow together, like rose and thorn. That’s what makes beauty real.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes glistened, her hands trembling as if the words themselves were drawn from her own scars. Jack stared at her, his lips parting, then closing again. A moment of silence hung — then a deep exhale.

Jack: “You always find poetry in the pain.”

Jeeny: “And you always look for reason in it. Maybe that’s why we keep talking.”

Host: The clock struck eleven. Outside, the streets glowed under silver moonlight, and a few children’s voices echoed distantly — laughter cutting through the night like a reminder of innocence not yet touched by reality.

Jeeny turned her gaze toward the sound.
Jeeny: “Do you hear that, Jack? That’s what she meant — Ellen Key. The laughter that exists beside the pain. You can’t protect it forever, but you can teach it to keep singing even after it’s seen the world.”

Jack: “So what, Jeeny? We just let them walk barefoot through the thorns?”

Jeeny: “No. We walk beside them — and when they bleed, we don’t say don’t cry; we say I know, it hurts — but keep walking.”

Host: Jack’s shoulders dropped, the fight leaving his eyes like smoke fading from a long-burned match. The sound of dripping water filled the space again — steady, calm, real.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe life isn’t about removing the thorns, but teaching them how to hold the rose without fear.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. To let them feel both — the beauty and the wound — and to know that one can’t live without the other.”

Host: The rain began again, gentle, almost whispering against the windowpane. Jack looked out and smiled faintly, the kind of smile born not of joy but of acceptance. Jeeny sat down across from him, her eyes calm, her hands around her cup of tea, now gone cold.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny, sometimes I wish I’d met someone who told me that when I was a kid.”

Jeeny: “You just did, Jack.”

Host: The camera of the night slowly pulled away — through the window, over the street, past the lamplight and the sleeping city. Inside the bookstore, two souls sat among the books, surrounded by the quiet hum of shared understanding.

And there, amid the thorns and the roses, they both finally understood:
To love a child — or a life — is not to protect it from pain,
but to give it the courage to grow despite it.