Childhood used to be a somewhat innocent time for a kid to be just that. A carefree period of individualized development without external stresses.

Commentaries on the strange preponderances for school suspensions that appeared on the news this semester remind me of the increasingly complex anti-child world that we now live in. Cases in point:

1. A first grader gets himself suspended for kissing another classmate and was forced to miss his ice cream social.

2. A few weeks later, a second grader was banned for ripping another student’s blouse.

3. Two junior high school students got disciplinary reprimands for giving each other Midol, resulting in one girl undergoing drug counseling and the other girl having a six-month suspension.

4. A kindergartner gets kicked out for carrying his beeper.

5. Carrying a knife to cut up your chicken lunch spelled trouble for an eleven-year old girl.

Offbeat reasons for throwing someone out of school are becoming more and more goofy as school officials are trying to make their districts more hospitable for their students. It’s a good start but it has now gone beyond simple discipline to paranoid overreaction. Kids are not kids anymore. They are viewed as premature juvenile criminals.

Goodbye, Barney…Hello, Peter Jennings.

Somber childhood realities from adulthood are now seeping into our nation’s schools. Guns, drugs, racism, sexism, classism, religious discrimination, teenage pregnancies and crime are now part of the daily curriculum of reading, writing, social studies and math. These things can happen anywhere. Whether it is in Newark, Atlanta, Tucson, Portland or Ames, children everywhere are at-risk. And that’s what the schools really need to mandate, not banishing a six-year-old for sexual harassment.

As a child growing up in the 1970s & ’80s, my childhood had some innocence but reality started to sink in around the first grade when I started chasing guys around the classroom. Perhaps by wearing an “I’m the Boss” sweatshirt kind of hindered those possibilities of infatuation. Oh, well.

I even had violent encounters with bullies from both genders which never solved any problems. My last physical fight took place in summer camp when I was eleven.

So I continued to have skinned knees, play sports (mainly kickball and softball), dress up dolls, race hot wheels, climb trees and read Nancy Drew mysteries as favorite past indulgences.

In fifth grade, I participated in a gambling ring for one day before Mom found out. She was upset over that.

I didn’t gamble again until I was in my early twenties where I spent the afternoon in Atlantic City. By then, it was boring and I hated it.

By the time, I moved on toward junior high school, it was a weird world of community meetings and weekly rap sessions that were mandated for the student body. Wandering around New York City with my friends without notifying Mom was kind of cool, since I discovered a few things about the music district on W. 48th Street that had its own sets of camp.

Never bought any musical instruments, though, simply too expensive for a fourteen-year old.

A time of weird rebellion as I hid in a closet with three other classmates arguing whether or not to sneak out of school (we didn’t) and was invited by the weirder kids to hang out in Central Park to smoke marijuana (I declined).

But I did smoke cigarettes for a day before I was caught (again) by Mom who made me smoke the entire pack! I wound up being very ill with a severe headache and never smoked again.

I did very well in High School because I originally wanted alleviate boredom. By my sophomore year, I moved to Newark and the school where I finally got my diploma from was the exact opposite.

It was predominantly African-American and most of the students came from lower socio-economic families than the white and mostly affluent classmates from New York City.

It was a very strict place where girls still were caught for smoking in the bathroom or (worst case) immediately sent packing to the “pregnant girls” high school if they became pregnant. I had friends (including a very good one) who actually defied both stigmas.

Also, you could be subjected to “getting the boot” at any point in your school career, although after sophomore year it would have been unlikely.

I knew of a few guys who were given “the boot” in both junior and senior years. One of whom was caught with a gun and a vial of Spanish Fly in his gym bag.

I, too, became outspoken by telling racist white teachers that I actually visited Harlem, and I did not spend my free time “babysitting bags!”

By the I had finally graduated from high school my relationship was of an ambivalent relationship of like/love. I feel sorry for these kids who are being subjected to silly rules which determine suspension guidelines. At least, for me, the things which I did in my youth weren’t required of my parents (mainly Mom) to frantically search for a lawyer.

Let them enjoy their childhoods.

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Adrian DeVore is a senior in food science from Newark. She has a B.A. in English from Rutgers University (Douglass College).