This article intends to examine the status of childhood in Sartre’s works. Although, at first sight, Sartre seems “not to like childhood”, to the point that, except for The Childhood of a Leader, hardly any children can be found in his prose, a more careful reading of his biographies, from his Baudelaire to his Saint Genet and even The Family Idiot, reveals a surprising curve in his relationship as a writer to childhood, through the notion of original choice, which was elaborated as early as Being and Nothingness. More particularly, this article reads The Words in order to reconsider the status of childhood in the writing and thought of Nausea’s author. This new inspection of the childhood motif in Sartre’s works allows for a reconsideration of the importance of the key notion of Sartrian philosophy: freedom.