In 1993, Oprah Winfrey starred in a television movie called There Are No Children Here. She played LaJoe Rivers, a Black mother raising her children i
In 1993, Oprah Winfrey starred in a television movie called There Are No Children Here. She played LaJoe Rivers, a Black mother raising her children in Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, a public housing development where violence, poverty, drugs, deteriorating buildings, and institutional neglect had become part of daily life.
The film was based on journalist Alex Kotlowitz’s nonfiction book about the Rivers family, particularly two of LaJoe’s sons, Lafeyette and Pharoah.
But the title tells a story all by itself.
There are no children here.
LaJoe was not saying there were literally no children around her. She was describing what happens when children live in circumstances that do not permit them to experience childhood in the ordinary way.
They learn things too early.
They learn which sounds mean danger. They learn when to stay inside. They learn which people to avoid. They learn how quickly an ordinary afternoon can change. They watch the faces of adults and listen for trouble before anybody tells them there is trouble.
Some become quiet. Some become funny. Some become tough. Some become extraordinarily responsible. Some become caretakers. Some become excellent students because school feels like a doorway. Some become angry because anger feels safer than fear.
And adults can look at all of that adaptation and say, “She was always mature for her age.”
Maybe she had to be.
That distinction belongs in every conversation about childhood trauma.
A child who knows how to survive adult circumstances has not suddenly acquired adult emotional resources. A girl who can cook dinner, watch younger children, read a dangerous room, soothe an upset parent, keep secrets, navigate violence, or figure things out for herself is still a girl.
Competence does not cancel childhood.
Neither does toughness.
Neither does intelligence.
Neither does being “wise beyond your years.”
Sometimes what adults call maturity is a child realizing that nobody else is going to notice what needs noticing.
That child may grow into a woman who is extraordinarily capable. She can anticipate problems before they happen. She notices changes in people’s voices. She prepares for possibilities other people never consider. She knows how to keep moving when everything is falling apart.
People may admire her strength without ever wondering where she learned it.
Survival skills can become real strengths. We do not have to insult them or wish them away. But adulthood can give us something childhood did not always provide: choice.
You can decide which skills still serve you.
You can be observant without assuming every room is dangerous. You can help people without automatically becoming responsible for them. You can be dependable without being everybody’s emergency plan. You can rest before everything is finished. You can experience joy without first proving that you earned it.
And you can finally look back at the child you were without judging her by what she knew then.
She may have made decisions that adult-you would never make.
Of course she did.
She was a child.
She may have trusted someone she should not have trusted. Stayed quiet when you wish she had spoken. Spoken when adults told her to be quiet. Frozen. Run. Fought. Tried to please somebody frightening. Pretended everything was fine. Failed to understand something adults insist was obvious.
It was not her responsibility to possess adult wisdom before she had an adult life.
That is one reason There Are No Children Here still carries such a haunting title. Childhood does not disappear simply because circumstances refuse to honor it.
The children are still there.
And sometimes, many years later, the woman they became finally gets to turn around and see them clearly.
Not foolish.
Not weak.
Not difficult.
Not responsible for everything that happened around them.
Children doing the best they could with what they had.
If you were one of those children, you do not have to spend the rest of your life proving how well you learned to survive.
You already did.
Now you are allowed to learn what else life can be.
(Check out the Wakanda signage at about 1 hr and 22 seconds.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9MalaTdkCY