{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029218843172331546, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011926058437686345, 'mean_word_length': 4.804498269896194, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The secret lives of children

Three of my grandchildren performed in the holiday carols pageant this year. The kindergarteners entered first. I could see only their upraised fluttering hands, enacting their song, as they bobbed along unevenly like nestlings jostling gently against each other. I heard only their tender voices, hunting tremulously for hard-to-reach notes, lisping through missing baby teeth. Eight grades and an hour later, the singers walked in smoothly, two-by-two, and took their places: young women in front and almost-men standing tall behind them. The rich warm voices of the young women twined in complex twoand four-part harmonies with the deep, still cracking voices of the men-to-be. In an hour, I had watched the last strains of infancy swell to the fullness of early adulthood. Amazing! Watching this pageant of life, I thought how little we know about the dramatic developmental changes that occur in the school years. At the beginning, children can barely tie their shoes and only cross streets holding their mothers’ hands. At puberty, they can sustain themselves independently in daily life, even earning a bit of pocket money. These few years stretch from the dawn of executive cortical functioning to the dawn of sexual maturity. I recalled my own school years—and how much my parents did not know about my life. Some stuff I kept secret, but most was simply out of their sight. Even seven decades later, the knocks and bruises and slights from children and teachers are still clear in my mind. My childhood was nothing like the happy time books describe. My daughter has told me painful stories of her childhood. I didn’t know. I didn’t imagine. Now, after years of working in child protection, child mental health, and family care proceedings, I wonder “Where are the voices of the children? What do the children think and feel and want?” Because, in the records I receive, there are only the voices of adults. When children enter school, their potential developmental pathways are many and uncertain; flexibility is high and new experiences from outside the family will come soon. By puberty, the many different directions of their development are becoming clear and, in the most worrisome cases, psychological functioning is becoming rigid. Indeed, when they enter school, very few children have psychiatric diagnoses. By puberty, 10% do and most are boys (Mental Health Foundation, 2015). Often, these boys are raised by mothers with traumas about men. What happens in the school years is momentous and often not known by adults. No wonder the school years are the last age for which assessments of attachment have been developed. In this editorial, I turn from the validity of the School-age Assessment of Attachment (SAA) to its utility, to what the SAA can tell us about children’s lives. Before describing children’s experiences, I want to briefly explain what an SAA is. The SAA consists of seven picture cards about which children are asked to tell fantasy stories and recalled personal episodes. It opens by asking the children to introduce themselves and their families. The seven picture cards depict a gradient of danger: going out alone, rejected by friends, moving house, being bullied, father leaving, 715933 CCP0010.1177/1359104517715933Clinical Child Psychology and PsychiatryEditorial editorial2017