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Not Allowed to Grow Up: Difference between revisions
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Not to be confused with [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]] or [[Not Growing Up Sucks]], which are about ''characters'' who are somehow unable to age when the rest of the cast does, for in-story reasons. Nor is it to be confused with [[Comic Book Time]], in which ''no one'' in a franchise ever ages. (Most misuses of this trope are really cases of Comic Book Time.) Nor is it to be confused with [[Not Allowed to Grow Old]], where after a [[Time Skip]] young characters may have grown older, but the adults remain exactly the same.
'''Please note that this trope is specific to Live
'''It's also specific to the Golden Age of Television and just a bit past it.''' Please limit entries on aversions to programs from before about 1972. After ''Family Affair'' aversions were the norm. (At least in American television. It may be different elsewhere, and we will trust in the judgment of our tropers when it becomes relevant.)
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* An [[In-Universe]] example, although not for the purposes of a TV show, can be found in ''[[The Sport of Ghost Wrestling]]'' by Demetrios Anagnostopoulos -- {{spoiler| Gloria was injected with a serum that would keep her a 13-year-old girl}}.
== [[Live
* As noted (and pictured) above: Anissa Jones as Buffy from ''[[Family Affair]]''. The program survived long enough for her to enter puberty, but the producers and writers insisted that her character — and her public image — ''had'' to remain an eight year old child. In addition to her performances on the program, Anissa was contractually obligated to make promotional appearances with her [[Suppressed Mammaries|breasts bound]], her hair in [[Girlish Pigtails]], and clutching the Mrs. Beasley doll even as she grew into her teens. The psychological damage thus inflicted is believed by many to have contributed to her death by drug overdose just a few years after the series ended.
* From the same era, Dawn Lyn as Dodie Douglas in ''[[My Three Sons]]'' was cast as a six-year-old and continued to play a six-year-old until she was nearly ten. While not nearly as extreme as Anissa Jones' case, it still resulted in some visual dissonance when she was costumed in outfits almost more appropriate to a toddler than her real age.
* The trope still affects some contemporary "teen dramas", forcing characters to remain teenaged and in high school for ridiculous periods of time, even as their actors age into and through their twenties. See also [[Dawson Casting]].
* Emmanuel Lewis, the star of ''[[Webster]]'' was twelve when he started playing the title role and seventeen when the show ended. His character aged only three years during the show's six-year run, from age five to eight.
* Similarly, Gary Coleman's character Arnold on ''[[Diff'rent Strokes]]'' aged much slower than the rest of the cast. Coleman's kidney disorder meant that the actor never grew above 4' 8". Ultimately subverted, though, in that Arnold's failure to grow larger ''was'' eventually acknowledged and discussed in an episode late in the series.
* The producers of ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' were quite concerned about Frankie Muniz growing up, to the point where they filmed as many episodes as humanly possible in a very short period of time and then showed them on a regular schedule, so that Malcolm would appear to age more slowly. They are also preparing an animated version of ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' that appears to be designed to avoid the characters' aging.
** Later seasons, however, avert this to some degree; you can see Malcolm graduating from high school, applying for colleges, and Francis gets married.
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** Though it was for different reasons than most shows. Where most shows that do this hold to a nebulous frozen time frame, ''Lost'' was on a strict timeline with the first four seasons covering a span of roughly 100 days during which Walt's puberty would have been implausible. He returned when the show's timeline jumped forward a few years catching up with his age.
* During its short tenure, ''[[Century City]]'' explored two aspects of this trope: first, a child actor suing his parents over the right to take growth suppressant hormones to continue his acting career, and second, an elderly member of a Backstreet Boys-esque boy band suing his former band over a contractual dispute that forces all members to take gene therapy and other surgery to keep them perpetually boi-ish. Incidentally, both cases averted this trope: the child actor was convinced not to take the pills through an appeal to the wonders of growing up, and the boy band case was dropped after one of the members who went through the procedure died of old age.
* ''[[LazyTown]]'' provides a rare modern live
** When the show resumed production in 2013 after six-year hiatus, Chloe Lourenco Lang took over the role of Stephanie, essentially resetting her back to an 8-year-old played by a 13-year-old.
* After ''[[Punky Brewster]]'' moved from NBC, Soleil Moon Frye started developing early and went through a massive growth spurt. At first, producers dealt with the situation by [[Suppressed Mammaries|binding her breasts]] while still playing the character off as, physically, a prepubescent child. When the premise became too unbelievable, Punky was finally allowed to have her puberty. The first episode that admitted Punky was growing up begins with Punky marching in on her caretaker at breakfast and announcing proudly ''[[Refuge in Audacity|"Henry, guess what? I'm getting boobs."]]''
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* ''[[Leave It to Beaver]]'' generally averted this trope, though Beaver aged more slowly than the actor portraying him did, especially later on. Still, it had an effect -- many plots of the later seasons of ''[[Leave It to Beaver]]'' had the title character getting involved in similar troublesome situations as the ones he got caught in as an eight-year old, causing the character's [[Flanderization]] into almost an idiot. (Case in point: "Beaver The Bunny". Would have been better in the second or third season instead of fifth.) Despite this, in the series finale he is explicitly stated to be entering high school; Jerry Mathers was, at the time, a fairly reasonable 15 years old.
* Appears for reasons unknown on ''[[Rome]]'' with Vorena the Younger and little Lucius. Vorena is at least eight years old when she first appears in the second episode, and Lucius is an infant. When the series ends roughly 20 years later Vorena is still played by the same actress and Lucius seems to be no older than five or six. Especially odd considering the fact that Octavian ages from twelve in the pilot to being in his thirties when the show ends, and Caesarion (who isn't even born until Lucius is around four years old) shows up being somewhere around ten years old in the last episodes.
** Since they editors stated that they 'compressed the timeline of events' somewhat (i.
* Inverted by long-running show ''[[7th Heaven]]'', in which seven-year-old Mackenzie Rosman was cast as five-year-old Ruthie Camden. By the very end of season 11, she'd matured so quickly that the character had been aged up to 18—actually skipping over
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[You Can't Do That on Television]]'' where the kids found out the network was secretly feeding them shrinking hormone to keep them from looking older.
* While most of the kids on ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' were allowed to age with their actors, the character of Cindy was forced to continue to wear her hair in pigtails far beyond what is normal for her age. Possibly this was done so as not to change the theme song, although technically her hair was braided, not curled in later seasons. Then again, she was kept in little-girl dresses and ''acting'' young until she was actually ''older'' than Marcia was at the start of the series.
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* The entire cast of ''[[That 70s Show]]''. Eric turned 17 in the second episode (despite telling Red that he was 17 in the pilot). He then turns 18 in the third episode of season six.
* ''[[Round the Twist]]'' starts in 1989, and finishes in 2000. The three Twist kids more or less stay the same - the two twins manage to de-age from 14 to thirteen, and Bronson is still in the same primary school class. To be fair, this is because the series was rebooted twice - first in 1992 (for one season) then in 1999 (for two seasons).
* Averted with Mark on ''[[The Rifleman]]'', surprisingly for the day. He
* Forced on the producers of ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' because of the expected length of the show's run compared to the [[Framing Device]] that it's all being told to the narrator's children in a ''much'' shorter period of time. The production team solved the dilemma by using [[Stock Footage]] of the children -- usually the same second-season shot, but also filming a [[Reaction Shot]] during season two for use when the Mother was finally encountered.
* Terminally averted with Sophia in ''[[The Walking Dead (TV series)|The Walking Dead]]''. She is lost in season 2, and {{spoiler|is found to have turned into a zombie and killed}} at the midseason finale. You can tell the actress, who is in her early teens, had grown considerably in the hiatus between the two seasons and would probably have been progressing faster than the scant weeks which were supposed to be passing could account for.
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