Dostoevsky isn't sentimentalizing childhood innocence here—he's identifying something physiological about how the young restore us. Children operate without the scaffolding of self-protection that adults build, so proximity to them dismantles our own defenses almost against our will; we cannot maintain our curated selves in their presence. A harried parent who sits on the floor to build blocks finds not that their troubles vanish, but that the constant internal narration—the rehearsal of failures, the catalogue of regrets—simply stops, replaced by the texture of the moment itself. This is why time with children often feels less like entertainment and more like a kind of necessary repair.