So, my daughter is growing up..

Sure, it's a slow process, but it's still happening before my very eyes. Just like all parents, always and forever, I guess.

It really was only yesterday when I held her out on the back deck, and we looked up at her star in the black of night and she sang:

Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are...
Up above the world so bright
Like a daya [dada] in the sky...

Wasn't it?

Last night, my wife and I had a rare disagreement over parenting. There was a show on tele, an in-depth magazine style show whose subject that week had attempted suicide by jumping off a very large bridge in our home city.

"What did she do?" asked our 8-year old.

"Went for a swim" I said. "Come on, let's go do something."

My first instinct, you see, was to protect my daughter from the harsh, sometimes brutal reality of the the world, even safe as we are here in Australia.

"No, I think it's good she's asking questions," said my wife, whose first instinct was to expose our daughter to a brutal reality so as to prepare her for an unknown future.

I eventually bundled our daughter off to bed (it was bedtime).

But now I'm thinking, surely, at the age of 8, when all your concerns are focussed on school friends and teaching your toys what you learnt at school that week (toy school), and how the tooth fairy must have been too busy to collect your tooth a week ago (but thankfully remembered the next night), surely that is too young to have to face the sometimes heartbreaking reality of the world.

Surely knowing about the loss of the arctic ice shelf and the polar bears is enough. Surely there's another year or two of fun and happiness, cuddles and looking forward to Christmas before the harsh white flouro bulbs of tv news and the darker side of social media combine to try to crush the simple and beautiful dreams of my little girl.

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Photo by @drwom

@DrWom and #teamaustralia footers by the fabulous @ryivhnn