The article offers an understanding of citizenship as a general orientation of the child to spiritual and moral values and readiness to protect them, which is especially vividly manifested in the dangerous circumstances of life - extreme situations. The author traces the brief genesis of the phenomenon of a child’s civic position in the context of a common understanding of the safe development of childhood as a successful child’s solving of developmental age tasks. For a child, a citizen is one who is fenced (protected), but who is himself capable of protecting (protecting) others. Examples of childish heroism and asceticism in history and modernity indicate the existence of an unknown constructive force of a child, while the pseudo-civil position of adolescent extremism, incorrect guidelines in the spiritual and moral sphere generate asocial and antisocial forms of behavior, which turns out to be destructive for the subject and society.