Since you bumped it, I thought I would put in two cents. I'm a big fan of the bildungsroman form of story, but mainly for its value to the adolescent. Coming of age is a subject that really doesn't mean much in childhood--I was initiated through several levels of cub scouts, but the badges earned and the koolaid I drank didn't really give me any strong sense of accomplishment or acceptance. Granted, the cub scouts is an excessively monitored organization without any room for individual autonomy, but it seems my general experience is shared with most of my peers. I suppose the age of initiation depends, but rite of passage doesn't really stand out in my childhood memories.

The things that really stands out to me is my moments of unwarranted, uncontrollable emotion. For me, my childhood doesn't read well as a linear sequence of events; it's a swirling chaotic splattering of confused actions and emotions. When I was just a few years old I was mad for being the first one caught in a game of hide and seek so in the next round I ran up to the kid who found me and hit him. It was totally pointless and inane and got me in trouble (which today adds up to nil); it was just a chaotic outburst of emotion. I remember another time my mother got angry and broke my toy water gun. It wasn't valuable, probably just fifty cents at the local Dollar Tree, but I can still remember the sheer anxiety and terror from having something of mine taken and destroyed.

Perhaps these are learning experiences in there own way; everything is. But not in the same life-altering way as surviving the wilderness or leaping through the ring of fire or crossing the desert and making it to the promised land. The part that makes them uniquely and essentially childhood memories is the chaos of emotion and action. For this reason I feel like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the very best portrayals of childhood in film (or any medium, literature being too necessarily intellectual to be properly moving), for the moments where Jim Carrey is curled up and crying under the table and running away from the wagon with the bird. The context is lost to immediate emotional momentum.

Anyway, that's what I think it is to properly be a story about children.