Children and concepts of childhood have received unusual prominence in the news during the past year.
From statutory rape to the age of consent, issues relating to young people have been endlessly discussed. In some cases, children have even been asked what they think.
The questions, however, are phrased by adults. They deal primarily with our concerns rather than with theirs.
Children almost never get the opportunity to create their own agendas, to bring what is important to them into the public domain. While adults have created for them groupings such as Dáil na nÓg or mini-United Nations, these simply replicate grown-up structures.
The true voices and stories of children are much harder to find. And when we do get to hear them, what they tell us is often surprising.
On the Block is a half-hour documentary made entirely by the children of Dublin's Fatima Mansions. It was shown on RTÉ on Christmas Day and was the culmination of two years of filming by the children, all of whom were under the age of 12.
Fatima Mansions, with its 14 blocks of Dublin City Council flats, has frequently been interpreted to us by outsiders. Film crews and journalists descend periodically on the area to explain to us how awful it is, with its drugs and its crime and its hopelessness.
It is an image against which many of the local people have railed. Certainly there were severe problems, but why define an entire community exclusively in negative terms, they asked.
They were upset, for instance, by the remarks of High Court judge Paul Carney during a manslaughter trial last year. He had spoken of being haunted by descriptions of conditions "at the cruelly named Fatima Mansions".
The court heard during the trial that "people were told 'go left for the white stuff and go right for the brown stuff' when looking for drugs at the block of flats". Justice Carney specifically referred to the large number of young people who had died before being able to give evidence at the trial.
This was certainly part of the truth about Fatima.
But alongside it was the reality of hundreds of families getting on with their lives in the flats while combining together to form what has become one of the strongest and most vibrant community groupings in the country.
They have involved themselves at every stage of the regeneration of their area, a €200 million project which is now well under way. The old 1950s blocks are being demolished to make way for new houses and apartments, a mixture of public and private housing.
The opening of the first phase of the redevelopment in 2005 was featured in the children's documentary on their lives in the flats. Crowds of dignitaries were there for what was a good-news story.
Bertie Ahern was seen on the evening news cutting the red ribbon on the spanking new houses for the local residents.
In a well-publicised moment at the time, 11-year-old Sean Mulvaney was seen squaring up to the Taoiseach to ask him when the children would get proper play facilities. The answer was unclear and the cameras moved on.
In On The Block, however, we saw the episode from a different and novel perspective - that of the children themselves. One of them managed to get a camera up close to Bertie as Sean Mulvaney questioned him. We perceived the Taoiseach from a child's view, a much lower angle than usual.
We also saw more than was on the news. As Sean pursued him on the issue of play facilities, the smile on Bertie's face became strained as he changed the subject rapidly. "So listen, it's good to see you anyway," said the Taoiseach as he moved off.
While the children clearly delighted in questioning the various politicians who arrived from time to time in the flats, their film is much more about the ordinary business of being a child. Their focus in on their games, their friends and how they spend their time, rather than on social problems or community agitation.
They do mention the drugs, the drinking, the shouting and the crime, and how they would change all that if they had a magic wand. But it does not consume them or get them down.
They talk about looking forward to having new houses, but also their sadness at losing the flats.
We see some of them keeping bits of their old wallpaper to remind them of their homes.
What they show us through On The Block is that children are children regardless of the environments in which they live. They have the same vitality, energy, joy and mischief as any other children in the country. A statement of the obvious, perhaps, but one which bears repeating in the context of our continuing tendency to blacken and sensationalise particular areas and estates on the basis of their deprivation status or crime statistics.
And by the way, the children of Fatima Mansions still have not been provided with decent play facilities.