Is a child ever really a child?

In class on Monday we discussed rather a child is ever really a child. I like to think so. I think it comes down to simply believing a child is a child. If you truly believe something than to you it is real. I think this is one of those topics that need no evidence or justification, you just believe it to be true or you don't. I know from my own personal experience as a child that I was nothing like I am today. When I was a child my mind set, my views on life and people, my attitude were all different. When this transition occurred, I could not tell you, but I can assure you it did occur. Even though adults are "building" children the second they are born, a young child is still naive to the things that make an adult an adult. A child has that raw way of looking at the world based soly off of the nature they were born with instead of the experience that drives the way adults think. No doubt there are exceptions to this, like there are in anything and everything else, and maybe there are people out there who have never experienced childhood, but I refuse to believe that childhood as a whole does not exist, so it does.