Things My Job Has Taught Me: Part III (I am so incredibly lucky)

So this is another perspective post...
We have a large murder trial going on in court right now, it is gang related so security is pretty tight and everyone is a little jumpy. The worst part about the whole thing is the number of children involved: each of the two defendants have at least one child. The victim and most of the witnesses, many of whom were (legally) children when the murder occurred, have children. Most days we have four or five children in the courtroom who are anywhere from infancy to elementary school aged.
Now anyone who knows me knows my general tolerance for children is low, but really a child in a courtroom? It would be distracting and inappropriate in any circumstance (I am sorry there are some places that children don't belong, especially children who misbehave these include courtrooms, boardrooms, romantic restaurants and lecture halls.) And even if social mores and the rules of polite company don't bother you, do you really want your four year old listening to graphic shooting testimony or seeing autopsy photos blown up to life size?
I tend to be all for honesty and openness with children, I think that my parents treating me and my inquires with respect helped spring my intellectual curiosity. But there is something to be said for preserving childhood,  and I can't imagine that you have much in the way of childhood memories when you are exposed so young to the criminal justice system. It is by the luck of birth that I was born to an upper middle class white family and my first exposure to the law was visiting the Supreme Court at four. The archetype for me to mold myself to Earl Warren. I try to remember that not everyone has positive images and hope for their own future, that there are so many whose  model is absent or in shackles.