Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Children are not angelic little creatures in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting—although, hey, angels aren't even angelic in this book. We see children primarily as a bunch of little predators on the island that Tamina comes to live on. These tots are oddly Orwellian, playing by petty rules and punishing Tamina when she won't play their way:
She was now at bay. They were pursuing her all over the island, throwing stones and pieces of wood at her. She ran away, she tried to hide, but wherever she went she heard them calling her name: "Tits, Tits, Tits, Tits..." (VI.22.3)
Okay, so the children are not exactly childlike in their innocence; they're sensual creatures with plenty of curiosity about Tamina's body. Kundera even calls their caressing sessions "rape."
Far from the image of blissful youth, these kiddos appear to be agents of divine punishment. In fact, Kundera gives us another clue about the children when he tries to explain their aggression: "Their desire to hurt is positive and cheerful, a desire that can rightly be called joy. They want to hurt anyone beyond their world's border only in order to exalt their own world and its law" (VI.23.4).
Does this sound like anything else in Kundera's life? We'll give you a hint: it's the Communist Party. We can confirm that link between children and Communism by reminding you of President Husak, the "President of Forgetting," and his speech to the Pioneers (who are kind of like the Boy or Girl Scouts, only Communist). Kundera muses on the phrase "children are the future" and comes up with this:
Children are the future not because they will one day be adults but because humanity is becoming more and more a child, because childhood is the image of the future. (VI.25.3)
It's a future in which the past has no part since it has all been erased or altered to suit the kitschy Communist ideal. Childhood, instead of being a time of sweet innocence, has become a symbol of humanity's willful turning away from the responsibility it has to its own history: "We must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. For children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles" (VI.25.4).
It's a grim view of both children and the future, but that is Kundera's point. In this society, everything has been turned on its head. Symbols don't mean what they used to in a past that is rapidly vanishing.