Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,199
edits
Most Writers Are Adults: Difference between revisions
troupe=group of performers. troop=small unit in a military, paramilitary or pseudo-military organization.
m (Mass update links) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (troupe=group of performers. troop=small unit in a military, paramilitary or pseudo-military organization.) |
||
| (10 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today. ....The nasty side of myself wanted to answer that guidance counselor by saying, the only reason you don't think gifted children talk this way is because they know better than to talk this way in front of ''you''"''.
|'''[[Orson Scott Card]]''', [[Justified Trope|defending his use of this trope]] in the introduction to ''[[Ender's Game]]''}}
[[Family Guy
You may have noticed that children in fiction are... not exactly like their [[Real Life]] audience. There's a good reason for this. Any fictional depiction of young people is going to be [[Nostalgia Filter|viewed through the lens of an adult]]. Most writers aren't themselves children. They tend not to be child psychologists either. If they don't happen to have children, but must write young characters, they tend to end up with characters who are tiny adults. The characters are physically children but they are still treated as adults in most situations (except for when plot calls attention to it). This is usually in terms of personality, how they react to situations, and the situations that they get into in the first place, which tend to involve plot points generally associated with more mature series.
Line 9 ⟶ 10:
Part of the problem with writers writing like a child is that ''their writing sounds childish'' - which is why this is an omnipresent trope. Also, do not underestimate children; there are pre-adolescents who vaguely understand sexual matters from an intellectual viewpoint, read encyclopedias and other adult literature, and in the past were apprentices in various trades - so they cannot afford to act or speak childishly.
Please note that there is an inverse function to this trope - most writers are adults, but are so aware they're writing for children that certain activities will be excised from underage characters even if it's realistic for that age. So your sixteen-year-old won't be dying to get laid; they're searching for true love, and all relationship interactions will be completely romantic rather than sexual (excepting [[Asexuality|asexual characters]]). And they'll ''never'' smoke, drink, or get high unless it's a [[Very Special Episode]] or the character's an antagonist. Also note that children acting in [[Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour|ways that they shouldn't be able to, i.e. like adults,]] is also a common [[Creepy Child|go-to Horror Trope]].
See also [[Improbable Age]] and [[Vague Age]]. Sometimes results in [[Menace Decay]]. Compare [[Most Writers Are Human]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Pokémon (
* The ''[[Digimon]]'' franchise, where a bunch of kids are thrust into the middle of nowhere and exposed to powerful [[Mons]] without any adult supervision whatsoever...
** This trope is justified, for ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' anyway. The kids were ripped out of their reality and placed into the Digital World, and its war, against their will. ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' is bit more dodgy, since they come and go at will, but at least it's simply what the kids choose to do, and they know another world is at stake, and they're the only ones capable of saving it.
** ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' is the big aversion of the franchise: the characters generally act much more like children, their adventures in the Digital World have clear emotional consequences as one'd expect from children, and they are supported by adults who are instrumental in taking down the [[Final Boss]].
** ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'' and ''[[Digimon Xros Wars]]'' have the same justification as ''Adventure'', with the caveat that Taiki is slightly more reasonably-aged than the ''Adventure'' protagonists. ''[[Digimon Savers]]'' is the most reasonable: the youngest of the protagonists is fourteen, and they're working for what amounts to a police force.
* ''[[
** Even goes so far as to have one of the kids ''in love with her teacher, and '''vice versa'''.'' But then, considering this is [[CLAMP]]...
* ''[[The World of Narue]]''. Kazuto develops romantic feelings for Narue, instead of mere lust... although he does sometimes briefly gets perverted thoughts.
* ''[[A Little Snow Fairy Sugar]]''. Saga and her fellow 11-year-olds. She also has a part-time job, prioritizes a lot more than can be expected of any real kids her age, and acts more as a mother-figure than a sister-figure towards her little cousin.
** The fairies (at least the younger ones, such as Sugar herself) do act more like children, though. Brownie points for that!
* ''[[
** May be justified in this case, seeing as how the fictional society in which they live apparently saddles young people with responsibilities up to and including conducting wars at much younger ages than we consider appropriate in ours. Some characters, like Itachi and Kakashi when they were young and Shikamaru take this to the point of being flat out [[Wise Beyond Their Years]].
* ''[[FLCL]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] the ''hell'' out of this trope, with twelve year olds Naota and Ninamori always trying (and failing) to act like mature adults.
** Of course, they are arguably more successful at it than the ''actual'' adults in the story.
* Slightly averted in ''[[Dennou Coil]]'', with interesting results: The children, acting as children and treating everything as a game, are capable of more in a virtual environment than adults, that act like an adult (save for moderator Tamako and the grandma). When [[And You Thought It Was a Game|the children find out it wasn't an online game at all]], the story becomes ''Japanese horror''.
** They all still act remarkably mature for 12-year olds. It's only very occasionally that their behaviour reminds us that they aren't adults. In fact, combined with the fact that they sound quite mature as well, the only thing that reminds us that they aren't in their late teens is their modest development.
* One point of criticism in the [[8.8|Anime News Network review]] of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' is the seemingly unrealistic maturity of the main character. The first time we see the nine-year-old heroine, she's pondering the direction and purpose of her life, which has been perfectly ordinary so far.
* Very, very averted in everything Hayao Miyazaki ever writes, except the ones that don't actually contain children. Even Markl only acts mature because he's consciously trying to.
* [[Lampshaded]] on ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]''. Teenagers should not be saving the world!
**Though that [[Child Soldiers|tends to be who gets the job]] in real life.
* Arguable in ''[[Kanon]]'', where 18-year-old Yuichi and others talk kinda like adults... even though just the opposite of this trope is displayed particularly with Ayu.
** Ayu and Makoto are the biggest exceptions to the trope, for [[Justified Trope|justified]] reasons. Ayu is mentally younger than she seems, {{spoiler|since she's been in a coma for the past seven years}}. And Makoto is the youngest member of the cast at around 14 or so...{{spoiler|or rather, she's a fox spirit pretending to be a 14 year-old human}}.
* Ditto for just about everyone in ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', also released by same company Kyoto Animation. That is, except for Haruhi herself and Kyon's ten-year-old sister.
* Ironically inverted with another K.A. work, ''[[Lucky Star]]'', where the "teenage" girls look, talk, and sound like preteens. The cutesy music and pastel-colored artwork only makes this series feel more like elementary school than high school.
** Until they start talking about [[
* ''[[Gundam]]'' abuses the hell out of this trope for just about every single series. Many of the [[Super Prototype]] Gundam pilots are just an [[Ordinary High School Student]] around the age of 16 who's never even touched something of such mechanical complexity, (But are frequently well gifted with robotics) however can instantly grasp how to operate the machine. Even if top Aces much older then them had trouble with them in the past. Beyond that point, they often behave with a maturity and sense of purpose a decade beyond their time, unless they are a [[Wide
* The titular character of ''[[Ojamajo Doremi]]'' falls in love more often in one season than other people in their whole life. And she is 8 at the start of the first season.
* Due to [[Fridge Logic]], Lelouch of ''[[
* ''[[Now and Then, Here
* Heavily [[Averted]] in ''[[Pani Poni Dash!]]''. The whole point is that the main character is eleven years old, has a job as a high school teacher, and yet acts childishly as you'd expect someone her age to (such as shrieking at the top of her lungs or calling her students by distinguishing traits rather than their names).
* [[Popotan]] averts this with Mii, who is very [[Genki Girl|hyperactive]] and obsessed with [[Magical Girl
* This is a common criticism of ''[[Shugo Chara]]'' where the 11-12 year old protagonists act like they're 17.
* Most artwork from the 16th through early 19th centuries tends to portray children as small adults.
** Possibly because children wore the same clothes as adults once they got out of baby clothes. Until well into the 19th century, the only difference between a nine-year-old's clothes and a thirty-year-old's was the size.▼
==
* The various [[Batman|Robins]] have been theoretically in their teens. Outside of awkward romance they have rarely had anything in common with teenagers. [[Justified Trope|Then again]], they ''are'' being raised by Batman. Lampshaded in an issue of ''[[Young Justice (
{{quote|
* The original [[New Mutants]] (oxymoron noted) of [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] fame had this problem. While the kids didn't act like adults per se, they certainly didn't act like teenagers, superpowers notwithstanding. But then again, they ''were'' created by [[Chris Claremont]]. Marvel later redeemed themselves with ''[[Generation X]]''.
* ''Sugar and Spike'' was about two young babies who were fully aware of their surroundings and capable of semi-rational thought, but spoke a language only the two of them understood. "Fxlbgl?" "Rtmskt." "Word."
* ''[[
* The [[Young Avengers]] are like a less extreme version of the Runaways. All of them are at least living with some sort of adult guardian, but they're still a group of teenagers who banded together to fight crime all on their own.
* The ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (
* Inverted
== [[Film]] ==
▲== Film ==
* ''[[Spy Kids]]'', particularly the sequels and ''especially'' the third one.
* The "kids" in ''[[The Wizard (
** "''He touched my breast!''"
*** "I touched her breast? She doesn't ''have'' breasts!"
* Averted in ''[[Paranoid Park]]'', where teenagers actually act like real teenagers, complete with sexuality and the thrill of taking risks. Needless to say, the MPAA classified this as a quite adult film.
* Inverted in the 2009 ''[[Astro Boy (
* According to Siskel and Ebert, this was the main problem with ''[[Blank Check]]'': having received a million dollars in cash, the 12-year-old protagonist then proceeds to use most of it on things an adult would want (like black-tie parties and dates with adult women at fancy restaurants), rather than a kid.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* Lampshaded in ''[[The School Story]]'', a book about a kid who writes a book. One of the adults mentioned that the author seems to be really good at portraying kids accurately.
* In ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'', the "books" [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|are Bobby Pendragon's memories of what just happened to him being recorded]]. He writes in very professional prose.
** During the course of the series, the timeline is different for him than for the characters who primarily stay on earth; he is probably older than expected (and he does write a lot).
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. Justified though, childhood can be eroded in harsh conditions, and one wouldn't be able to act like a dumb kid in this [[Crapsack World]]. For Sansa, who tries to be a good little girl and believes what adults tell her, things do not turn out well.
* ''[[The
** Also, some of their sitting charges as well (when they're not acting a lot ''younger'' than they should be, such as five-year-old Andrew who doesn't know what New Year's is). Take for instance one of the Perkins girls: she's two years old, and yet speaks in complex full sentences and acts more like she's around TEN!
** And then there were the jobs they were entrusted with by adults, the most [[Egregious]] being the "Super Special" plots, where they would take charge of younger kids away from home, including while stranded in a snowstorm and on vacation in New York (which was a strange city to most of them!). All they had to do was offer to help and explain that they had started an after-school baby-sitting business, whereupon one of the parents they'd worked for would chime in with, "They're ''very'' responsible," and bingo, they were treated like honorary adults, no further questions asked. And since eleven was the magic gateway to the [[Competence Zone]], often they would be "taking care of" kids who were only a year or two younger, who might exhibit different kinds of brattiness or stubbornness but would always treat them as an authority figure to be strategically undermined instead of just saying, "Dude, ''you're my age''. Stop acting like a camp counselor. No, I don't want to see what's in your Kid Kit." Apparently you can be "handled" up through the age of ten, and after that you enter a higher plane of thinking and gain all kinds of insight into the minds of "kids."
*** Mallory wears an "I <3 Kids" shirt at the age of eleven. If you saw that in real life, you'd assume it was a last-resort item belonging to her mother and they were behind on laundry at her house,
* ''[[Ender's Game]]''. The author does point this out in the foreword of some editions, in what amounts to, "So what?" Somewhat justified by the fact that the kids are supposed to be towering geniuses, and most of them are being pushed to their limits. ''[[Training
** Gifted kids love this book and empathize strongly with Ender. May be a case of [[Reality Is Unrealistic]].
* Averted by the early works of [[Gordon Korman]]. He had his first book published when he was 14, and got into a groove of writing stories about kids that feel genuine in tone (if outlandish in narrative events). Although he's grown up by now, works like ''[[No More Dead Dogs]]'' still feel like they're written by a teenager who happens to be a professional writer.
* ''An American Dream''. Steven Rojack's stepdaughter Deirdre is fluent in French, has a flair for poetry, has an eloquent understanding of marriage dynamics, and apparently believes that "people want to make love after a death". Rojack openly acknowledges this by noting that "she always spoke like an adult".
* Averted very much so by authors [[Beverly Cleary]] and [[Judy Blume]], in different ways. [[Beverly Cleary]]'s books about kids have kids who act their age and even do a great job of making you see the way a third-grader (or first-, or fourth-) thinks and views the world, and are very cute and light-hearted. [[Judy Blume]]'s books are harsher and more towards the cynical scale of the [[Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism]], portraying kids who are not only not [[Children Are Innocent|"innocent"]], but featuring very harsh realities (middle schoolers who drink, bullies who do not get their comeuppance).
* ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'' has been accused of using the "cute precocious kid" device to get away with having six-/seven-/eight-year-old Scout know and think things she really probably wouldn't, no matter how smart she was and how much Atticus told her about practicing law. And then there's Dill's philosophizing; you could argue that he's not really supposed to understand the full reach of some of the things he says, but a lot of the time he just sounds a little too knowing. On the other hand, Scout ''is'' supposed to be recalling the plot rather than describing it as it happens, so some at least of the precociousness can be explained by her either "tidying up" what was said or thought through the lens of a rational adult, or simply wrongly attributing stuff in hindsight.
* [[Tamora Pierce]]. Most of her protagonists start out at around ten and grow into their late teens or adulthood, and all the way through they think the same, act the same and talk the same. The [[Circle of Magic]] books, for example, feature a [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]] who all become accredited mages at the [[Improbable Age]] of fourteen and thereafter mix (apparently exclusively) in adult circles, and most any character who even suggests they might not be as mature, capable or knowledgeable as older people is either a [[Jerkass]] to be publicly humiliated, a villain to be defeated, or both.
** Not ''quite'' the same. They each go through a lot of [[Character Development]], and all of them have more empathy and self-control and less tendency to whine in later books compared to former ones.
** In the [[Tortall Universe]], pages start combat training at about ten years old and train for four years to become squires. The two quartets to have much to do with that are told from the POV of a page; the first one, Alanna, acts considerably more childishly than the second one, Keladry. This is probably due to temperament; Alanna is an impulsive hothead, especially in her youth. Still, they tend to be quite mature.
*** Also, Keladry had already witnessed battle on more than one occasion, which is why she wanted to be a knight.
* Some readers have suggested Tiffany Aching, the nine-year-old witch in ''[[
* Averted in [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[IT]]''. King really gets the way children think and reason.
* Averted in the works of [[Robert Cormier]]. His teens swear, masturbate, drink, fight, and just generally flout the artificial limits imposed in the majority of American literature.
* Scott Ciencin's ''[[
** Arguably justifiable - most adults would probably find being sent 64my back in time and being turned into dinosaurs to be truely disturbing. Most 13-year-olds would probably find it truly AWESOME.
* The protagonists in [[
* Five-year-old twins in the mystery novel ''Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter'' are able to draw such compelling and detailed pictures of the "vampire" they saw in the woods that it nearly gives their mother nightmares. Most kindergarteners still draw "people" as a circle with sticks coming out of the bottom for legs.
* In ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', Sunny Baudelaire is a baby, yet has the same knowledge and intelligence as her teenage siblings, and this is not treated as remarkable.
* Ayla in ''[[Clan of the Cave Bear]]'' matures exeptionally fast both physically and emotionally. She is taught to become a medicine woman at the age of six, teaches herself to hunt at the age of nine (which was also when she has her first death curse, the neanderthal equivelent of incarceration), goes through sexual maturity at the age of ten and has her first child at the age of eleven (!!!). Then again, she is raised by neanderthals, who physically mature at a faster rate than the cromagnons and wonder why she did not physically mature EARLIER than she did.
▲== Live Action Television ==
* Most teen soaps in general, especially those with [[Dawson Casting]]:
** ''[[The OC]]''
** ''[[Saved
* Quite a few of Hispanic [[Soap Opera
** In ''[[Carrusel]]'', the girls play with dolls and read comic books, while at the same time talking about boys, clothes, celebrity gossip, and romance novels/soap operas. The boys have varying levels of interest in girls, but all still like boyish pastimes.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* ''[[Peanuts]]''. These kids occasionally take on amazingly adult responsibilities, such as the time Charlie Brown checked himself into the hospital.
* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' played this to excellent effect, with him sometimes wise beyond his years, and sometimes just being hyper-articulate about his various selfish whims. To quote Watterson, "Calvin has never been a literal six-year-old."
* Simultaneously justified and averted in ''[[FoxTrot]]'': the featured pre-teens are Jason and Marcus, whose adult speech and mannerisms are justified by them being a pair of [[TV Genius|hyper-intelligent]] [[Nerd|ultra-nerds]]. Averted in that the two also indulge in childish mannerisms, and their peers behave in age-appropriate manners.
* Most of the point of ''[[Cul De Sac]]'', similarly to [[Calvin and Hobbes]], is taking children and seeing what happens if they're as articulate as adults while retaining their childish personalities.
* ''[[Bloom County]]'' features "children" who work for newspapers, run political campaigns, and hack into government organizations. Granted, this
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
* ''[[
▲* Most artwork from the 16th through early 19th centuries tends to portray children as small adults.
▲** Possibly because children wore the same clothes as adults once they got out of baby clothes. Until well into the 19th century, the only difference between a nine-year-old's clothes and a thirty-year-old's was the size.
▲== Video Games ==
▲* ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]'', sort of. The characters are all probably between 8 and 12, and they still have relationships, unrequited love, etc. But at the same time, they still have the songwriting skills of young kids, think friendship bracelets are awfully important, and have the general maturity of that age group, such as one camper assuming that his father hates him and wants him to die just because the father is very strict.
* The majority of the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' cast are under 20, while the main protagonist himself is 15. Tails is 8. Child Genius or not, he seems more mature/rational than the rest of the main cast. Also, since when is a 15 year-old and an 8 year-old allowed in a casino?
* ''[[Backyard Sports]]''.
* The average age of the cast of ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** Though the Koroks are child-like because they are the future forms of the also "[[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|child-like]]" [[Ocarina of Time|Kokiri]].
* inverted in ''[[
* Strangely enough, this is averted in ''[[An American Nerd in Animated Tokyo
==
▲* inverted in ''[[Axe Cop (Webcomic)|Axe Cop]]'', which actually ''is'' written by a child (though edited by his adult brother). This means the adult characters act very much like children.
▲* Strangely enough, this is averted in [[An American Nerd in Animated Tokyo|American Nerd]] in that while the main character lives in an apartment in Japan, alone, [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|Artist]] is only (right now) slightly older.
▲== Web Original ==
* This is a common criticism of the [[Whateley Universe]], which features characters in their mid-to-late teens acting like full-grown adults. The series would make a lot more sense if it was set in a college rather than a high school.
** And then you have the witches, three characters who are presently in middle school, who come up with childishly simpleminded schemes while spouting babytalk. Their odd, stylistically low maturity level can be very jarring when compared to the behavior of real middle schoolers.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Rugrats]]'' is the extreme version of this trope, with 2-year olds that acted like 7 year olds that talked in a language incomprehensible to adults. Even moreso Angelica acted much older than three and was treated likewise by the adults.
** This one was mocked in a Fairly Odd Parents movie, where Timmy Turner enters a show which looks the same, but with the children actually acting like the toddlers they are.
** In ''[[All Grown Up!]]'', the kids are
* As time went on, ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' slowly started to treat their main characters more like young adults than eleven year old kids, except for when they needed to either for plot reasons or to set up a gag. This is most obvious in the episode "Stranded," which uses every [[UST]] Trope in the book for Jimmy and Cindy.
* All over the place in ''[[
{{quote|
'''Aang:''' You still ''are'' a kid! }}
** Or maybe the fact that 14-year-old Azula has a criminal record which would make eyebrows raise in Nuremberg tribunal is even squickier than kisses between a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old.
* ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'', where the characters are supposed to be in fourth grade, yet no one finds it odd that Arnold's coach asks him to be the best man at his wedding. Or that the main character takes it upon himself to personally fix the problems of every adult in the neighborhood, ranging from a coach's alienation with his [[Ambiguously Gay]] son, to paranoia, to illiteracy, to obsessive compulsive disorder, to so many more.
{{quote|
* ''[[Home Movies]]'', played to great effect though.
* The ''[[South Park]]'' kids have gotten more and more adult as time has gone by, for definitions of "adult" that fit within ''[[South Park]]''.
* ''[[The Weekenders]]'', which had a bunch of preteens that acted like, and talked like 16-year olds.
* This was the whole point of ''[[Fillmore!]]!'', which was basically ''[[Law and Order]]'' or ''[[NYPD Blue]]'' set in a middle-school hall monitor department, where all of the child cast and characters acted and treated situations like graffiti and candy eating with the same wordplay, attitude, and gravitas 30-year old beat cops would use in rape and drug cases. [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]] is commonplace to say the least.
* ''[[Doug]]'', a show that took place in middle school where all the kids looked and acted like high school students.
* Used frequently on ''[[The Simpsons]]''. Was [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] and [[Justified Trope|justified]] in one episode where Marge worries that Bart and Lisa (who are 10 and 8 years old, respectively) are already acting like teenagers. Homer chalks it up to all the growth hormones in food.
Line 157 ⟶ 150:
* Subverted and played straight on ''[[Phineas and Ferb]];'' the main characters clearly have a genius intelligence well beyond most adults, but use their abilities for childish antics like building a roller coaster in their backyard; while there ''are'' love interests, these are played more as kiddy crushes than epic romances. A straighter example, or possibly a parody, would be Candace, who at sixteen has already planned out what she wants to name the kids she plans to one day have with her love interest. But even she comes off more as an annoying older sister than an adult most of the time.
** Candace's behaviour is actually pretty normal for her age. It's pretty common for 16-year-olds to dream of getting married to their crush and a lot of teens have names picked out for future children. I'd say the Trope is averted with her (in addition to busting her brothers, she worries about getting her license, appearing more "mature" to the adults, having a job, and other common teen concerns).
{{quote|
'''Phineas''': Why, yes. Yes, I am. }}
* Justified in ''[[Kim Possible]]'', as Kim's twin brothers are [[Child Prodigy|kid geniuses]] from a genius family. And like real child prodigies, they do kid stuff and get in trouble, just in an extra-smart
* ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'' often fell into this, which just got silly when you considered this meant they acted like the adults they hated. One of the ten-year-olds was even in a serious relationship.
* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]''. Blossom, Buttercup, and Bubbles are ''supposed'' to be ''five years old'', yet they (especially Blossom and Buttercup) act like they're at ''least'' 12 years old or so, what with their understanding of certain sexual things like seduction, in a mild way at least; the first time they beat the Rowdyruff Boys by kissing them, they were tipped off to that weakness by Miss Bellum hinting at them by telling them to "act ''nice''" and [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|and showing them her cleavage]] to solidify the fact. True, they aren't necessarily human so that ''may'' be a justification on their maturity, but the thing is, it's not just them- most of the other kids in the show are shown to be as equally mature as the Power Puffs. Interestingly, this is also a rather strange case because they still occasionally struggle with problems a five year old might actually have, such as learning manners, getting over "cooties", sharing, and leaning what's right from wrong; but, even then, they learn about those things in a more mature way than actual five year old girls would.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Youngsters]]
[[Category:Creator Standpoint Index]]
[[Category:Omnipresent Tropes]]
| |||