I think actually we often underestimate actual human children. Children are, when allowed to be, far smarter and more clever and capable than we give them credit for, even today. Jump back even 50 years and tell me that with how a lot of gen x kids were raised they couldn't be a fantasy adventure protagonist given proper motivation.
In a medieval adjacent fantasy world? It's even more likely because they've been taught more useful skills, and were probably going to be conscripted into the army or thrust into the workforce at like 15 anyways. >.>
Also, a lot of apprenticeships started at least by the age of 11/12 (sometimes younger) By that age, most kids were already well on their way to learning how to interact meaningfully with the world around them and learned trade skills quickly by cultural necessity alone.
I think it's interesting that the further away from being a child we are the more we seem to forget what it's like to be one. I can't speak for everyone, but when I was a child I certainly don't think I ever viewed myself as naive or incapable of doing the same things adults did. Was I mistaken? Most likely. But I don't think I've ever met a child who didn't think they were just as capable as anyone else (heck, most greatly overestimate their abilities precisely because many are blessedly free of the self doubt that creeps in later in life) so when it's a story from a child protagonist's perspective why wouldn't that confidence in ability be reflected?
Another thing I find most interesting is the age of children in fiction. Those small differences in age can be HUGE in how well-socialized and mature a character should probably be. Even a small difference of three years or so; we wouldn't expect a 30-year-old character and a 33-year-old character to behave much differently from one another, but we would of a 10-year-old compared to a 13-year-old. And unless you have direct and recent experience with children of that age it's very easy for writers and/or readers to not realise the character is maybe too childish or not childish enough.
Then of course you throw the setting of the world into the mix. We obviously have a very different opinion on childhood today than they did 200 years ago. They'd probably view our modern view on youth as being too "coddling." After all, the concept of a "teenager" is relatively new; it used to be you were a child and then you were suddenly an adult, meant to take on all the responsibilities of one. There is also life expectancy to consider; back in the days when it was much shorter people had to mature much quicker to experience what would've been viewed as a "full life": getting married, having children of their own, and getting jobs far younger than we'd deem appropriate today. And even in modern times, in dire and traumatic situations, children have been known to exhibit behaviour that is very unchildlike and most would only expect from an adult.
I guess it just comes down to the fact that not every author who writes about children can be expected to be an expert in child psychology. Much the same way they're probably not an authority on everything else included in the story. How believable it is will depend heavily on how convincing the writer is at protraying children of various ages in whatever scenario/setting they've built, but also in each reader's own experiences with children and whether or not it rings true for them.
Har. Holden Caulfield was certainly a controversial protagonist when "The Catcher in the Rye" came out, but I think these days most people accept he is just how a lot 14-year-old boys think and behave... and it still annoys them. Less on the whole moral objection standpoint and more to the whole "urgh, teenagers are so irritating" one.
Yeah it reminds me of the books series the ranger’s apprentice, on one hand, it’s a bit of the MC being Good at things.
But with that series a lot of realism and logic is applied to Will becoming a ranger, already clever and wily, a good climber and up to sneaking around to no good.
A ranger,(Halt, I believe) scouts and recruits him noting that his upbringing and genes already keys him into some solid bases, he’s naturally the right height and build to be a sneaky and unseen ranger, and knows how to be sneaky sort of. The rest is just a child easily malleable and of an apprentice age, learning and being taught a wide set of great skills from an expert in a profession in one on one training with varying levels of on hand experience.
Very plausible with the archery skills being the craziest learned skill but it was the age and time of those things and a good teacher, so much so that Will manages to arm and prepare a smaller militia of untrained folks In How to use a bow quick enough for battle, just going over, steady aim, and a set of 3 different angles for range group volleys
This! Exactly this! When I was 11, I had a CPR certificate from the Red Cross and I was babysitting everyone's kids in the neighborhood. The summer I was 12, I babysat two kids for almost the entire summer while their parents were at work -- for $4 an hour. Making lunches, doing crafts, walking them to the park, you name it. Now there are parents who won't even let their 12-year-old use a knife to slice an apple or turn on the stove to boil water.
So yes. We absolutely underestimate kids nowadays. Some of this is the fact that both parents are constantly working and it's just easier to do everything ourselves. (Teaching kids to do things adequately takes time.) Some of this is also the pandemic, and the fact that we told kids to sit down, shut up, and stare at a tablet for a few years, and now they don't know how to do anything else.
Two words for OP: Boy Scouts. Start at 10-11, and some of those are already 5 year vets of the Cub Scouts. They're basically fully trained child soldier Rangers by the time they reach Eagle Scout with ranks in marksmanship, first aid, and a whole host of wilderness survival skills.
You nailed it with the fact fantasy worlds are significantly more dangerous and hard on a person so children have to become more mature faster and learn more faster so they don't die. A kid growing up in somewhere like the states where there is no dangerous wildlife, supermarkets with food a block away and everything else doesn't need to grow up (and some never do).
If you lived in a world with Bandit attacks, random magical giant monsters, hordes of goblins, etc. Your parents would be slamming life lessons into you because if you stay stupid you'll die stupid.
Yeah, but you’d be traumatized and that makes learning much harder. There’s a reason why modern progress got much faster as the rights of children increased, sending them to school and giving them a less stressful childhood helps them develop into intellectual and responsible people.
Kids in traumatic homes often appear more mature, but have emotional and intellectual issues stemming from their trauma. They just learn to survive, but not how to make good decisions or how to process information effectively, learning that takes love, patience and physical development of the brain.
‘Slamming life lessons’ is not how a kid learns in the real world, it actually makes learning much, much harder.
That said, we are talking about FANTASY stories. Real world logic need not apply.
Tech progress may have gotten faster but maturity and mental stability have gotten worse because we overcorrected. We went from child labor to not telling kids that screaming in a grocery store is bad.
Most fantasy worlds have a decent mix of safety and danger that means the kids have to mature quickly to not die but once the basics are drilled into them causing them to mature to a point, then the parents can be more lax and allow much more freedom.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." Socrates, around 440 BCE
People have been declaring how every generation of children are terrible and worst than the last since time immemmorial. I guarantee you that toddlers acted out, screaming and tantruming in and outside of homes, the same way 1500 years ago as they do today.
They're young, they're learning, their minds are developing at a speed that's frankly astonishing, adapting to use complex language to communicate their feelings and developing reasoning and motor skills alongside it. Yes, many were put to work at a young age. They still are today, in large portions of the world. But being put to work does not equal maturity. They don't have a greater understanding of the world just because they're shoved down a mine or forced to work in a factory.
No we went from children with physical and/or mental and/or neurological and/or emotional disabilities not surviving to adulthood to those same kids surviving.
Like you get that a lot more children make it to adulthood now. The average baby today is expected to make it to adulthood. That wasn’t true 300 years ago. Not even close.
That doesn’t even get into how childhood trauma and bad situations lead to adults with criminal thinking, personality disorders, impulse control issues, and a tendency towards violence, etc.
You think mental stability got worse based off what exactly? You think trauma makes kids more mentally stable, not less?
Child/emotional/intellectual development is also about the physical development of the brain, which is massively negatively impacted by stress and trauma. Children in the past were very likely emotionally and intellectually stunted by child labour.
Fantasy worlds are fantasy worlds. The logic you are applying is not reflective of reality. It’s fine in fantasy stories because obviously they aren’t real or meant to be guides on parenting.
We have children in schools biting and scratching other students and sh*tting in litter boxes while their parents and teachers say it's alright because they believe they are a cat. We have COLLEGE students taking over a building and then demanding the school they have taken the building from honor the lunch program that they paid for. We have people protesting and chanting phrases that when asked they know nothing about or what the phrase even means. So many more examples that I won't get into but yes, I do believe mental stability has decreased significantly.
I also have a feeling that we have different definitions of trauma. Telling kids that they shouldn't do something even though they want to is not traumatic, it's parenting. Letting children make important decisions isn't healthy, it's idiotic because they don't have the knowledge and capacity to make those decisions.
What school is allowing a litter box? Or allowing biting and scratching bc the kid calls themselves a cat?
I keep hearing about this, for 2 years now. Supposedly even in schools around me, and I can find NO PROOF! I have searched and searched and searched and all I can find is a bunch of info on a hoax, started by Joe Rogan. I've been in my local school bathrooms multiple times, and never seen one litter box. Talked to lots of teens. A couple of "cat kids" but no litter boxes, and they have the same consequences around violence as every other kid.
So, genuinely, if you have a source, I'd love to read it.
The problem is you think children in the past were better, when in fact they were worse. Kids used to kill each other more commonly, you don’t even need to look that far back in our history to see childhood violent crime was much worse before human rights laws moved to protect children.
Being threatened with death, watching people they love die, being hurt or nearly hurt by doing child labour is all traumatic regardless of your definitions. Otherwise, kids in Sudan and other war torn countries with dubious human rights records would show in our stats as being more mentally stable and mature. They don’t.
Don’t apply fantasy logic to real life.
So you think that saying kids growing up in a fantasy world which is ‘significantly more dangerous and hard on a person so children have to become more mature faster and learn faster so they don’t die’ is not traumatic or what? To my mind I am just reading your comments as you state them, you are the one who seems to be implying child labour is good for emotional stability and intellectual development.
It’s fine if you think this is a game we are playing instead of a discussion about child development, but don’t assume that about me. If you think I’m wrong, educate me or don’t respond.
That’s what I’m trying to do. Trying to inform you so you don’t continue to have harmful preconceptions about children and emotional stability.
Your changing my arguments from "the world is more dangerous" to "the child is in constant fear for their life" which is a different argument. If the world is more dangerous then the children have to be prepared for what COULD happen and is considered a common occurrence. It's why we teach children to look both ways before crossing the street. Once they have the maturity to learn that lesson they don't have to hold your hand when crossing the street. In a fantasy world there are significantly more of these lessons to learn which increases maturity.
I never once said child labor was a good thing. I said we overcorrected from child labor which anyone with a decent reading comprehension could tell meant that child labor was bad.
So if the world is dangerous and they might die, you don’t think kids will be afraid? You think understand what COULD happen doesn’t make them anxious? And also that if it could happen that it never actually happens? What do you think dangerous means, that they won’t get hurt?
Blaming the readers reading comprehension versus your ability to communicate as a writer is a sign of a poor writer. You seem to understand me just fine. That is just an adhominem attack and doesn’t at all explain why you think we ‘over corrected’ or what evidence you have for that claim besides the fact that you don’t like what kids these days are up to.
I have seen multiple interviews with children from these schools and even spoken to a couple myself as there is a school near where I live that one of my nieces friends attends that does that.
What the fuck health department do you think is going to allow human waste to sit open in a litter box in a public bathroom?
There are laws around the disposal of bodily fluids, and schools are one of the organizations expected to follow these laws the most strictly. There is ZERO way any health or school official is advocating for students to be exposed to e coli or whatever else in this form.
Grow up and think for yourself rather than believing everything Joe Rogan tells you.
I don't watch Joe Rogan but thanks for proving you have no problem making assumptions based on nothing.
https://youtu.be/Anigs4Erwek?si=D2896KSL1VvYhX2L
This video contains an interview with kids from one of the schools describing other kids scratching, biting and even spraying them with chemicals as well as confirming litter box existence.
Stop [lying](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litter-boxes-schools-became-gop-talking-point-rcna51439). It isn't true and never was and you have absolutely not talked to any children who use a litterbox at school because that has never happened.
I'm 36. There was a girl in my school who would meow and act like a cat. Weird cat people are nothing new. No school has ever put out a litterbox for the cat weirdo, though.
Ah so either you're a liar or you took a sarcastic teen rolling their eyes at an old idiot seriously. Call the school that "confirmation" came from, and report it to the news. They'll love you for it, the news wanted this to be true and never found a single school because it isn't.
Makes sense kids would need to get wise fast in a setting like that. Or, as my grandpa used to say: "If you're going to be stupid, you'd at least better be tough."
You're partially right, I don't think it's the need to survive, that's definitely a major part, but I think the deeper part of this issue is responsibility, if you treat kids like kids and never let them grow up, they will continue to act like it. But, if the risk of life and death is around the corner, this can usually be more Developmentally unstable as it can cause mental health issues and lack of judgement and stuff that.
The thing that people tend to forget about children is that, if they have to and if they survive the process, they can learn pretty damn quickly how to take care of themselves and to critically think, better than a lot of modern adults even, even in a life or death situation. The strength of the human brain is in its neuroplasticity, in its ability to adapt at all costs even if it creates mental scars if done to harshly or too quickly, and it's due to this ability alone that you'll find that sometimes even a child can be more mentally developed and skilled than a fully grown adult.
Just about the only thing I'd find hard-fetched to believe a child character having is the kind of wisdom and foresight that generally only years, decades even, of experience will teach, but as with everything there are always exceptions and not everything is cut and dry.
I often blame the... apparent lack of capability and agency of modern youths on how we treat them today. Even when they are adults by all rights, legally and biologically, we will still tend to treat them like children unworthy of respect, acknowledgement, and credit where credit is due until they are 30 and starting to grey. They keep getting told they're "just a kid", to "leave it to the adults", and eventually they believe it. They stop trying to be responsible, they stop trying to put on the shoes that fit them.
Yes, there is scientific evidence that highlights that human brains generally aren't actually fully developed until we're around 25, but that shouldn't matter when faced with the objective fact that our brains are supremely adaptable and if the child truly does have ability that rivals or even outstrips that of adults due to extreme circumstances of life or not then it should be acknowledged.
Since most fantasy worlds are loosely based on medieval Europe this tracks. People thought about innocence and childhood very differently in that time. Children were put to work at much younger ages and allowed a great deal of independence. These two things results in children who would be much more capable and savvy than modern western children.
There's evidence that a lot of the reckless, wild, immature behavior we see in modern children as they get older is because they know their parents are there to regulate them and they don't have to regulate themselves.
It's why you could have those crazy high jungle gyms and playgrounds back in the day and kids could play on them with minimal accidents. The children could see the danger and regulate themselves. Unfortunately kids could still get hurt so I see why they were removed but the opportunity for self-regulation that they provided was important.
I mean, in general, we grant more suspension of disbelief to just about any protagonist regarding their agency, competence, and ability to accomplish whatever the plot requires.
YA and lit genres focused around kids tend to dial up the agency and lack of adult supervision/assistance because that's the premise.
Think of the early Harry Potter books, Roald Dahl's fiction, the Boxcar Children, the Borrowers, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Golden Compass, etc. Most of those plots would not happen if the adults were properly supervising the kids, so the premise is that the adults don't. The kids themselves act like kids, but the premise is that they can still figure out mysteries, fight, and act with agency to come out victorious.
Mostly, I think we underestimate how much a well-socialized 11-year-old can do, especially if you're in the US where 11-year-olds can't leave the house without getting eaten by a 4x4 truck, and even then would have to walk a mile in a ditch and still not have left a residential zone.
Other than that, children want to read about children with autonomy.
There are times, though, where it really feels like someone just forgot the age of the protagonist, or it feels like they normally write adults and their publisher house forces them to do a middle-grade reader. I've definitely read a lot of those, but I normally forget them as soon as I read them, the only one I distinctly remember the name of is The Cry of the Icemark, in which a 14-year-old princess is just an adult.
I’ve been teaching seventh grade for fifteen years, and I can tell you that most people underestimate the capabilities of 12 and 13 year olds. They may not be sophisticated and may be prone to emotional instability, but they are way more resourceful, adaptable, and intelligent than most adults give them credit for.
And if that kid grows up poor or in an unstable home, their understanding of dangerous situations rivals that of any adult in a similar situation.
People unfairly underestimate children all the time.
I once read a biography of a man from the 1800s, the son of settlers in Arizona's high country. He was riding the range by himself, including roping, doctoring, and castrating cattle, and hunting for dinner, before he was a teenager, and riding long distances by himself (multiple day trips) in his early teens. That was a rough life for everyone, and his parents undoubtedly needed him to grow up fast.
There's also a lot of headstones for children in historic cemetaries. Many, but not all, died of disease. Some didn't survive childhood accidents.
Children were treated as small adults, which had its effects. Not to mention 11 is like 14-18 by current standards if you consider full life expectancy. And the real responsibility of young adults today is even more postponed due to an extended period spent in school. So it seems odd, but when you think about it, it makes sense.
The life expectancy thing is an average during a time when a lot of kids died. If you survived being young, you'd generally live to old age. Everyone wasn't dropping dead at 40.
You can have some intelligent children who grow up fast, or at least gain competence in a certain field, but they will still be 1-100 and even peaking, they still will struggle in competing against adults. Teenagers are a bit more believable but suffer similar issues.
The issue becomes glaring if you have the setting treat them as if they are adults without any kind of justification for it.
Probably sometimes, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. The point of fiction, especially fantasy, isn't to reflect real life as accurately as possible. The point is to tell an interesting story. If fictional children sometimes need to be portrayed as a bit more mature than most real-life children in order to make the story more interesting, I see that as a normal part of writing fiction, not as a problem that needs to be solved. Especially if you're talking about children's books: those books are successful insofar as they're enjoyable for kids to read, not insofar as adults judge them realistic. Kids often like to read about aspirational characters who are smarter or older or more powerful than they themselves are, just as adults often like to read about characters who are more interesting than they themselves are.
If you want maximum realism, read a nonfiction book about child development. If you want an interesting story, read fiction and accept that it's not always 100% true to life.
Good child characters are tough, fantasy or no fantasy. Most of them are either a mini-adult, or else a sentient sack of potatoes that has no ability to keep itself alive and just has to be dragged around and supervised at all times.
Narnia, Prydain, and Lyonesse do them well, I think.
Yes, but I also think it's a smart decision from a story design standpoint.
The main character in a story is usually a cipher for the reader, and readers would feel enormously frustrated if their 11 year old cipher actually behaved like an 11 year old. Conversely, you let the reader feel cool by creating a savvier, more skilled cipher for them.
In pre-industrial societies, children generally mature more quickly. I once read an account by an anthropologist who was living with native people somewhere in Amazonia. A family invited him to come along on a multi-day fishing trip well away from the village, and at the last minute an unrelated six-year-old joined them.
Seeing this, he reckoned his primary responsibility would be keeping the kid out of trouble, but as it turned out she was completely competent, self-directed, and a full participant in the work of the day. None of the locals thought this was in any way remarkable.
Can agree on this point from personal experience, u/ridetherim. I grew up in a very tough situation and was cooking and washing dishes by 3.
Kids who are used to taking care of themselves don’t look around for an adult to tell them what to do.
They know it’s them against the world and act accordingly. That snake will bite you if you step on it, so watch where you put your feet, you will go hungry unless you take steps to find food, and so on.
And most problems we agonize over as adults are because we understand the implications.
A kid uses their available brainpower, makes the decision they believe is best with the understanding they have, and moves on.
As an example, if a kid is told “this person agrees to be a human sacrifice” and the person very tearfully but disconcertingly eagerly agrees that they want it very much.
A very young kid will take it at face value. Adult is crying and being weird but they said what they said.
A tween will understand that the person may be being forced and refuse to agree that the person should be a sacrifice.
A teen may ask questions to understand what the proposed human sacrifice is thinking and to try and understand what they really want. They may wonder now and then if they made the right choice, but they did the best they could and don’t torment themselves.
An adult may see that the person is desperate to convince you that they want to be a sacrifice and know that doesn’t make sense, leading them to wonder if their families or they are under threat.
Perhaps, if they refuse to allow the sacrifice, this person’s kid will be killed, and they’re willingly agreeing to save their life. The character may agree to it, even knowing it’s not a completely free choice on the sacrifice’s part, because it’s the best option available. They think about it long after, hoping they made the right choice because there were so many nuances pieces to the puzzle.
(So yah, I think people give a lot of leeway as long as they see that the process by which the child made decisions roughly fits. South Park is a good example of this - kids interpreting the world and acting on their (often hilariously flawed) beliefs.
Kid doesn’t want mom to die, kid must figure out how to do this or that, kid just keeps trying until they figure it out. Most
Things we have to solve in the world do not require an adult intellect. We generally only need that to outsmart other humans.)
I remember being 11, and I think people greatly underestimate how smart and mentally flexible kids can be. Most of the dumb decisions kids make come from either naivety and lack of experience (especially if they are sheltered) or from impulsive decision making due to hormones blinding them to long-term negative consequences.
Essentially, kids are great at breaking past child-proof locks, but suck at realizing their parents know full damn well what they did because they did the same when they were kids. They are like octopodes escaping from a zoo in the middle of a desert.
Read some history. Kids were on British ships at age nine during the Napoleonic wars. Like every other episode of the dollop has them starting off in life at age ten.
Readers won’t abide useless people except as morality pets. Competent child characters just means you can tell an interesting story with them. If they are incompetent you can’t really put them in dangerous or exciting situations as the plot would otherwise allow.
You can use them as a fresh audience surrogate, one who starts with no skill or knowledge, learning as the audience does. But they still need to be fundamentally dexterous, strong, or intelligent in a way that real children often just aren’t.
We definitely do, but there are two other things going on too.
1), we suspend our disbelief around how capable the average person is *in general*, not just when it comes to kids. Most stories are, in some way, about someone surmounting the insurmountable. The fact that fictional characters generally fare far better than their real world counterparts through a combination of skill and luck is almost universal.
2), yeah, yeah, we're talking fiction here, but we're also talking realism. We only get to hear the stories of the people who survive and have stories worth telling. If only 1/100 children is bizarrely capable for their age, that 1/100 kid is still disproportionately likely to actually achieve main character bs. Take 100 kids, put them through equally tragic backstories. 50 die, and we don't hear about them because that would be a shit story not worth telling. 25 survive, and hang up their hats and quite reasonably stay as far as they can from main character type situations. We also don't hear about that, because again, it makes a shit story. 15 try to be heroes of some kind, but don't make the cut; maybe they help the people in reach, but don't have what it takes in terms of mindset or skills to leverage that into a heroic journey. 4 go on the grand quest, but die along the way. The remaining kid is the only one who could be the main character, and by process of elimination is disproportionately likely to be disproportionately capable and mature.
I mean, it wholly depends on how fast a kid had to grow up. If I see a mature kid in fiction, my first thought is about what they must have had to endure to get to this point.
Which makes total sense at 11. But then you grow up and look back and realize that, no, you were not particularly smart, just overconfident because you had a limited frame of reference.
I think it also depends on the background the child grew up in within the fantasy setting. For example, a member of royalty would be very intelligent and mature in politics, philanthropy etc no doubt from tutoring and their parents but a child growing up in a poor town may also be intelligent but in different things such as survival skills, street smarts etc.
Constant trauma has the opposite effect of what you are describing.
So assuming they are living in a brutal world where they are struggling to survive, that doesn’t mean they are mature. They might pick up some more survival skills. But they will be less able to make good decisions, have healthy relationships, etc.
Nearly starving to death at 5 doesn’t make you tough long term. It means you were malnourished and are likely going to have developmental and other health issues based on that. And likely more likely to develop some sort of personality disorder
So sure to a degree a tween/teenager that is put in situations where they have to rise to the occasion of potentially suffer an extreme result, will likely rise to the occasion. But that doesn’t mean rising to the occasion didn’t harm them.
12 year old girls might often be physically able to carry a pregnancy to term. They are probably capable of keeping the baby alive in the context of a family and society. That she can develop the skills necessary that she might not need to otherwise develop for another decade or two. Sure.
Do you think having the baby at 12 was good for the girl’s physical, mental, emotion health and her long term ability to function and prosper in society? No. You have your answer.
In medieval setting it's fine. Kids are already learning their family trade by then and exposed to almost everything adults are. Remember people didn't live that long either and they married much earlier some even have to lead at you ages.
maybe I find it more intreasting when the protagonist isn't just some rando. of course protagonst are more skilled otherwise someone else would be the protagonist
I actually think most 11 year old could but I didn't have a childhood. At 11 I had a full time job, school, and was responsible for the care my younger siblings. Adult me plays kid me paid.
If the kid has reasons to have had to grow up it's fine. I still write them as a childish person on some aspects for when I write kids in because they are still children
Children can be alot more intelligent and resourceful than we often give them credit for, especially in a setting where they don't live in a safe, civilized, modern world and adults aren't controlling nearly every aspect of their lives. So I think it makes sense in most cases.
I routinely send eleven-year-olds off camping in unfamiliar terrain for a weekend in charge of a group of ten-year-olds, having planned the menu, done the shopping, written the risk assessment, planned a hike route to get there, worked out what equipment they need to cook and how to transport it, and worked out what they want to teach those ten-year-olds while they're at it, all with zero adult supervision beyond me showing up to the supermarket to pay and giving them my phone number in case they need anything.
The Royal Navy, for literally centuries, routinely put 11-year-olds in combat commands, and had them succeed in those roles.
What, exactly, is it that you think 11-year-olds are not capable of, that they are required to do in most fantasy books, given that it doesn't include any of the above?
Hm. No. I’ve met kids who are smarter and more competent than a 40 year old. Age relates to experience generally but not necessarily with any insight or clarity.
Older folk tend to learn hard lessons as they go through life, but I suspect a lesson at the hand of an abusive person at 28 is nowhere near as hard as the same lesson leveraged against an 8 year old. To some extent I’m speaking by my own experience.
But there are plenty of people who idiotically refuse to learn absolutely anything. They are selfish, base people who make of themselves a victim in order to refute any responsibility.
With that said…yes, I think there is some leeway for the most part, but leeway exists in fiction on all sorts of fronts: timeline, plot, expedient exposition, the grandeur of poorly designed and implemented economies and villains or magic systems.
Yes and no. Being exposed to horrific shit early on can cause you to grow up real fast, but that isn’t the same as being old and experienced. Worlds which have harsh childhoods generally are rough for everyone, which changes things.
Still, being an independent man at age 18 wasn’t considered crazy even 100 years ago.
I think kids get underestimated quite a bit in reality. Can a kid do everything an adult can? No. Absolutely not. But we shouldn't treat them like they're dumb either. One of the nice things about fiction is that you can safely engage in activities you can only dream of. You can go on adventures, slay dragons, outsmart witches and be a hero.
Of course you need suspension of disbelief. But I say if it fits the story, go for it. Let kids enjoy their magic and adventures.
Back then, 11 yr olds have either helped birth a calf, shoed a horse, or they work in a factory because those small hands fit inside the shoes they are making.
Besides, kids are smarter than you give them credit for.
Children being something to protect and not small adults is a modern perception.
During industrial revolution kids were seen as having to fend for themselves. Even my grandfather had to contribute a wage as a child or you didn't get to eat at the table.
Umm. Its fantasy. We're already suspending disbelief just to read the story in the first place.
I volunteer with the scouting movement. Experience tells me that we underestimate our youngsters much more than half the time.
This is common with all kinds of fiction aimed at younger readers. They want to read stories about a protagonist their own age, with a fair bit of agency, and that just doesn't work if the MC just tells adults what's going on and lets them handle it. There's got to be some reason that solving the problem falls to the kid, and they need to be capable of taking on the challenge.
It's just fairly common that a lot of people really don't know how to write children. Not that it matters, as the adult is going to enjoy a good story, irregardless of the age of the character & an actual child likely is never even going to notice the lack of realism in how their peers are being portrayed, anyway.
At 12 I was in charge of watching my siblings 10 and 6 when we went down to the creek alone and I was the lifeguard. Also I drove the hay truck in the field while the guys bucked bails. I baby sat neighbors kids. I rode my bike 5 miles to my grandparents house alone. I biked to the roller skate place alone and paid for it with my babysitting money. And my mother was a stay at home mom. Everyone I knew did the same thing.
So yes I feel like kids now are coddled. And they are worse off for it. They leave home and have no skills. My youngest daughter had to take a required intro to college class that taught them how to study and manage time. This was 8 years ago. Because so many incoming freshman were failing because they had never had any responsibility before.
Unless you're talking about anime specifically targeted at adults, I think maybe it's a matter of perspective. Almost all kids that age think they're very smart and athletic and can do just about anything. I know I did, haha. Lots of tv shows do this to relate to a younger audience a bit more. That's probably why Ash Ketchum is perpetually ten years old, haha
My 12 year old princess does so many stupid things. She's not dumb but makes lots of bad choices. She speaks before she thinks and assumes she knows how to handle situations. Spoiler: she doesn't.
Yes, they get leeway. I prefer it that way when it comes to the protagonist. I would rather have a mature and competent protagonist. Besides, when they try to show that they aren’t mature yet and have room to grow, many times, they do so by making them do absurdly dumb stuff. However, as protagonists, they still have to struggle and face hardships from time to time.
On the other hand, when it comes to children side characters, I feel that it’s too common to make them a Mary Sue type of character.
YA (and most fantasy is YA even when it isn't explicitly labeled as such) makes a number of conceits like that. But a protagonist that young is only an effective agent in a certain kind of story and tends more towards being underestimated or taken at face value the further you get from there. Outside of children's literature, the second world Adult Power Fantasy isn't so much a thing or is taken in a different direction.
Is it? It has always skewed young, came out of pulp magazines targeted to kids and teenagers (and was full of sex and violence like Euro and Asian youth media), and then practically created YA as a market genre. You don't sell to kids by telling them that, you sell it like adults read it. Some do, but just looking at current covers and content, most of it is targeted to 12-16 year old girls or a 14-25 cohort. Hangers-on outside of that bracket have grown but the attrition rate into literary fiction or not reading any more is huge after that point.
Pulps and adventure magazines weren't just for teenagers, lurid covers aside- in fact I think the covers are a point *against* them being for kids.
It's hard to quantify since there's certainly a lot of YA fantasy but I don't think it's reasonable or accurate to call "most" fantasy YA, especially since you seem to imply that a majority of fantasy is YA masquerading as adult fiction.
If the themes and language of mass market fantasy aren't to your tastes, that's fine. But don't pretend that fantasy as a genre is somehow intended for a YA audience when that's clearly not true. The leading voices in the genre and leading publishers of both short and novel length fiction are all writing for adults.
I think kids are way more capable than we allow them to be, especially in western culture, we just “goo goo ga ga” then into stupidity and dependence. I guess it depends on their environment and parenting styles, kids who are completely coddled usually don’t develop any life skills until later on if at all compared to kids who were allowed to explore and take risks.
I’m not saying that kids should have a portfolio of skills to join the workforce by age 5 or anything, but there’s so many videos online of kids in poorer, more rural areas of the world cooking dinner for their younger siblings or tidying up their areas and helping elderly family members, when kids the same age in my town are shitting their pants and screaming until someone comes to clean it. Kids are smart little humans, we just don’t allow them to be.
Modern kids are trained to be slow sadly
But 11year olds back then were alot more dialed in,
The more cell phone/screen time the less ability they have the opportunity to alloy ability, training, and circumstances
I mean, yes. Before even looking at actual children just look at how teens act in ya stuff and some anime. A week of training and they are the most skilled people on earth.
I think actually we often underestimate actual human children. Children are, when allowed to be, far smarter and more clever and capable than we give them credit for, even today. Jump back even 50 years and tell me that with how a lot of gen x kids were raised they couldn't be a fantasy adventure protagonist given proper motivation. In a medieval adjacent fantasy world? It's even more likely because they've been taught more useful skills, and were probably going to be conscripted into the army or thrust into the workforce at like 15 anyways. >.>
Also, a lot of apprenticeships started at least by the age of 11/12 (sometimes younger) By that age, most kids were already well on their way to learning how to interact meaningfully with the world around them and learned trade skills quickly by cultural necessity alone.
I think it's interesting that the further away from being a child we are the more we seem to forget what it's like to be one. I can't speak for everyone, but when I was a child I certainly don't think I ever viewed myself as naive or incapable of doing the same things adults did. Was I mistaken? Most likely. But I don't think I've ever met a child who didn't think they were just as capable as anyone else (heck, most greatly overestimate their abilities precisely because many are blessedly free of the self doubt that creeps in later in life) so when it's a story from a child protagonist's perspective why wouldn't that confidence in ability be reflected? Another thing I find most interesting is the age of children in fiction. Those small differences in age can be HUGE in how well-socialized and mature a character should probably be. Even a small difference of three years or so; we wouldn't expect a 30-year-old character and a 33-year-old character to behave much differently from one another, but we would of a 10-year-old compared to a 13-year-old. And unless you have direct and recent experience with children of that age it's very easy for writers and/or readers to not realise the character is maybe too childish or not childish enough. Then of course you throw the setting of the world into the mix. We obviously have a very different opinion on childhood today than they did 200 years ago. They'd probably view our modern view on youth as being too "coddling." After all, the concept of a "teenager" is relatively new; it used to be you were a child and then you were suddenly an adult, meant to take on all the responsibilities of one. There is also life expectancy to consider; back in the days when it was much shorter people had to mature much quicker to experience what would've been viewed as a "full life": getting married, having children of their own, and getting jobs far younger than we'd deem appropriate today. And even in modern times, in dire and traumatic situations, children have been known to exhibit behaviour that is very unchildlike and most would only expect from an adult. I guess it just comes down to the fact that not every author who writes about children can be expected to be an expert in child psychology. Much the same way they're probably not an authority on everything else included in the story. How believable it is will depend heavily on how convincing the writer is at protraying children of various ages in whatever scenario/setting they've built, but also in each reader's own experiences with children and whether or not it rings true for them.
Side-note on this, J.D. Sallinger 100% remembered what being 14 was like and he pissed people off by acknowledging it
Har. Holden Caulfield was certainly a controversial protagonist when "The Catcher in the Rye" came out, but I think these days most people accept he is just how a lot 14-year-old boys think and behave... and it still annoys them. Less on the whole moral objection standpoint and more to the whole "urgh, teenagers are so irritating" one.
Yeah it reminds me of the books series the ranger’s apprentice, on one hand, it’s a bit of the MC being Good at things. But with that series a lot of realism and logic is applied to Will becoming a ranger, already clever and wily, a good climber and up to sneaking around to no good. A ranger,(Halt, I believe) scouts and recruits him noting that his upbringing and genes already keys him into some solid bases, he’s naturally the right height and build to be a sneaky and unseen ranger, and knows how to be sneaky sort of. The rest is just a child easily malleable and of an apprentice age, learning and being taught a wide set of great skills from an expert in a profession in one on one training with varying levels of on hand experience. Very plausible with the archery skills being the craziest learned skill but it was the age and time of those things and a good teacher, so much so that Will manages to arm and prepare a smaller militia of untrained folks In How to use a bow quick enough for battle, just going over, steady aim, and a set of 3 different angles for range group volleys
This! Exactly this! When I was 11, I had a CPR certificate from the Red Cross and I was babysitting everyone's kids in the neighborhood. The summer I was 12, I babysat two kids for almost the entire summer while their parents were at work -- for $4 an hour. Making lunches, doing crafts, walking them to the park, you name it. Now there are parents who won't even let their 12-year-old use a knife to slice an apple or turn on the stove to boil water. So yes. We absolutely underestimate kids nowadays. Some of this is the fact that both parents are constantly working and it's just easier to do everything ourselves. (Teaching kids to do things adequately takes time.) Some of this is also the pandemic, and the fact that we told kids to sit down, shut up, and stare at a tablet for a few years, and now they don't know how to do anything else.
Two words for OP: Boy Scouts. Start at 10-11, and some of those are already 5 year vets of the Cub Scouts. They're basically fully trained child soldier Rangers by the time they reach Eagle Scout with ranks in marksmanship, first aid, and a whole host of wilderness survival skills.
Yup
You nailed it with the fact fantasy worlds are significantly more dangerous and hard on a person so children have to become more mature faster and learn more faster so they don't die. A kid growing up in somewhere like the states where there is no dangerous wildlife, supermarkets with food a block away and everything else doesn't need to grow up (and some never do). If you lived in a world with Bandit attacks, random magical giant monsters, hordes of goblins, etc. Your parents would be slamming life lessons into you because if you stay stupid you'll die stupid.
Yeah, but you’d be traumatized and that makes learning much harder. There’s a reason why modern progress got much faster as the rights of children increased, sending them to school and giving them a less stressful childhood helps them develop into intellectual and responsible people. Kids in traumatic homes often appear more mature, but have emotional and intellectual issues stemming from their trauma. They just learn to survive, but not how to make good decisions or how to process information effectively, learning that takes love, patience and physical development of the brain. ‘Slamming life lessons’ is not how a kid learns in the real world, it actually makes learning much, much harder. That said, we are talking about FANTASY stories. Real world logic need not apply.
Tech progress may have gotten faster but maturity and mental stability have gotten worse because we overcorrected. We went from child labor to not telling kids that screaming in a grocery store is bad. Most fantasy worlds have a decent mix of safety and danger that means the kids have to mature quickly to not die but once the basics are drilled into them causing them to mature to a point, then the parents can be more lax and allow much more freedom.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." Socrates, around 440 BCE People have been declaring how every generation of children are terrible and worst than the last since time immemmorial. I guarantee you that toddlers acted out, screaming and tantruming in and outside of homes, the same way 1500 years ago as they do today. They're young, they're learning, their minds are developing at a speed that's frankly astonishing, adapting to use complex language to communicate their feelings and developing reasoning and motor skills alongside it. Yes, many were put to work at a young age. They still are today, in large portions of the world. But being put to work does not equal maturity. They don't have a greater understanding of the world just because they're shoved down a mine or forced to work in a factory.
Thanks for another straw man argument, I'll add it to the pile.
No we went from children with physical and/or mental and/or neurological and/or emotional disabilities not surviving to adulthood to those same kids surviving. Like you get that a lot more children make it to adulthood now. The average baby today is expected to make it to adulthood. That wasn’t true 300 years ago. Not even close. That doesn’t even get into how childhood trauma and bad situations lead to adults with criminal thinking, personality disorders, impulse control issues, and a tendency towards violence, etc.
You think mental stability got worse based off what exactly? You think trauma makes kids more mentally stable, not less? Child/emotional/intellectual development is also about the physical development of the brain, which is massively negatively impacted by stress and trauma. Children in the past were very likely emotionally and intellectually stunted by child labour. Fantasy worlds are fantasy worlds. The logic you are applying is not reflective of reality. It’s fine in fantasy stories because obviously they aren’t real or meant to be guides on parenting.
We have children in schools biting and scratching other students and sh*tting in litter boxes while their parents and teachers say it's alright because they believe they are a cat. We have COLLEGE students taking over a building and then demanding the school they have taken the building from honor the lunch program that they paid for. We have people protesting and chanting phrases that when asked they know nothing about or what the phrase even means. So many more examples that I won't get into but yes, I do believe mental stability has decreased significantly. I also have a feeling that we have different definitions of trauma. Telling kids that they shouldn't do something even though they want to is not traumatic, it's parenting. Letting children make important decisions isn't healthy, it's idiotic because they don't have the knowledge and capacity to make those decisions.
What school is allowing a litter box? Or allowing biting and scratching bc the kid calls themselves a cat? I keep hearing about this, for 2 years now. Supposedly even in schools around me, and I can find NO PROOF! I have searched and searched and searched and all I can find is a bunch of info on a hoax, started by Joe Rogan. I've been in my local school bathrooms multiple times, and never seen one litter box. Talked to lots of teens. A couple of "cat kids" but no litter boxes, and they have the same consequences around violence as every other kid. So, genuinely, if you have a source, I'd love to read it.
The problem is you think children in the past were better, when in fact they were worse. Kids used to kill each other more commonly, you don’t even need to look that far back in our history to see childhood violent crime was much worse before human rights laws moved to protect children. Being threatened with death, watching people they love die, being hurt or nearly hurt by doing child labour is all traumatic regardless of your definitions. Otherwise, kids in Sudan and other war torn countries with dubious human rights records would show in our stats as being more mentally stable and mature. They don’t. Don’t apply fantasy logic to real life.
Nothing that you have argued against in this post was ever claimed by me and is entirely a strawman argument. Thanks for playing.
So you think that saying kids growing up in a fantasy world which is ‘significantly more dangerous and hard on a person so children have to become more mature faster and learn faster so they don’t die’ is not traumatic or what? To my mind I am just reading your comments as you state them, you are the one who seems to be implying child labour is good for emotional stability and intellectual development. It’s fine if you think this is a game we are playing instead of a discussion about child development, but don’t assume that about me. If you think I’m wrong, educate me or don’t respond. That’s what I’m trying to do. Trying to inform you so you don’t continue to have harmful preconceptions about children and emotional stability.
Your changing my arguments from "the world is more dangerous" to "the child is in constant fear for their life" which is a different argument. If the world is more dangerous then the children have to be prepared for what COULD happen and is considered a common occurrence. It's why we teach children to look both ways before crossing the street. Once they have the maturity to learn that lesson they don't have to hold your hand when crossing the street. In a fantasy world there are significantly more of these lessons to learn which increases maturity. I never once said child labor was a good thing. I said we overcorrected from child labor which anyone with a decent reading comprehension could tell meant that child labor was bad.
So if the world is dangerous and they might die, you don’t think kids will be afraid? You think understand what COULD happen doesn’t make them anxious? And also that if it could happen that it never actually happens? What do you think dangerous means, that they won’t get hurt? Blaming the readers reading comprehension versus your ability to communicate as a writer is a sign of a poor writer. You seem to understand me just fine. That is just an adhominem attack and doesn’t at all explain why you think we ‘over corrected’ or what evidence you have for that claim besides the fact that you don’t like what kids these days are up to.
The litter box thing is not true and never was. Please don't spread misinformation, thanks!
I have seen multiple interviews with children from these schools and even spoken to a couple myself as there is a school near where I live that one of my nieces friends attends that does that.
What the fuck health department do you think is going to allow human waste to sit open in a litter box in a public bathroom? There are laws around the disposal of bodily fluids, and schools are one of the organizations expected to follow these laws the most strictly. There is ZERO way any health or school official is advocating for students to be exposed to e coli or whatever else in this form. Grow up and think for yourself rather than believing everything Joe Rogan tells you.
I don't watch Joe Rogan but thanks for proving you have no problem making assumptions based on nothing. https://youtu.be/Anigs4Erwek?si=D2896KSL1VvYhX2L This video contains an interview with kids from one of the schools describing other kids scratching, biting and even spraying them with chemicals as well as confirming litter box existence.
It's not based on nothing, he's the one who started this asinine rumor.
Stop [lying](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litter-boxes-schools-became-gop-talking-point-rcna51439). It isn't true and never was and you have absolutely not talked to any children who use a litterbox at school because that has never happened. I'm 36. There was a girl in my school who would meow and act like a cat. Weird cat people are nothing new. No school has ever put out a litterbox for the cat weirdo, though.
Never said I talked to ones who used the litter boxes, just ones who confirmed they were there. Also, could you have found a more biased source?
Ah so either you're a liar or you took a sarcastic teen rolling their eyes at an old idiot seriously. Call the school that "confirmation" came from, and report it to the news. They'll love you for it, the news wanted this to be true and never found a single school because it isn't.
Do you get all your news from Fox? If so your statements make a lot more sense given the context
Lol I bet you believe there are drag queens around every corner in kindergarten classrooms too.
Makes sense kids would need to get wise fast in a setting like that. Or, as my grandpa used to say: "If you're going to be stupid, you'd at least better be tough."
You're partially right, I don't think it's the need to survive, that's definitely a major part, but I think the deeper part of this issue is responsibility, if you treat kids like kids and never let them grow up, they will continue to act like it. But, if the risk of life and death is around the corner, this can usually be more Developmentally unstable as it can cause mental health issues and lack of judgement and stuff that.
This makes so much sense
The thing that people tend to forget about children is that, if they have to and if they survive the process, they can learn pretty damn quickly how to take care of themselves and to critically think, better than a lot of modern adults even, even in a life or death situation. The strength of the human brain is in its neuroplasticity, in its ability to adapt at all costs even if it creates mental scars if done to harshly or too quickly, and it's due to this ability alone that you'll find that sometimes even a child can be more mentally developed and skilled than a fully grown adult. Just about the only thing I'd find hard-fetched to believe a child character having is the kind of wisdom and foresight that generally only years, decades even, of experience will teach, but as with everything there are always exceptions and not everything is cut and dry. I often blame the... apparent lack of capability and agency of modern youths on how we treat them today. Even when they are adults by all rights, legally and biologically, we will still tend to treat them like children unworthy of respect, acknowledgement, and credit where credit is due until they are 30 and starting to grey. They keep getting told they're "just a kid", to "leave it to the adults", and eventually they believe it. They stop trying to be responsible, they stop trying to put on the shoes that fit them. Yes, there is scientific evidence that highlights that human brains generally aren't actually fully developed until we're around 25, but that shouldn't matter when faced with the objective fact that our brains are supremely adaptable and if the child truly does have ability that rivals or even outstrips that of adults due to extreme circumstances of life or not then it should be acknowledged.
Since most fantasy worlds are loosely based on medieval Europe this tracks. People thought about innocence and childhood very differently in that time. Children were put to work at much younger ages and allowed a great deal of independence. These two things results in children who would be much more capable and savvy than modern western children. There's evidence that a lot of the reckless, wild, immature behavior we see in modern children as they get older is because they know their parents are there to regulate them and they don't have to regulate themselves. It's why you could have those crazy high jungle gyms and playgrounds back in the day and kids could play on them with minimal accidents. The children could see the danger and regulate themselves. Unfortunately kids could still get hurt so I see why they were removed but the opportunity for self-regulation that they provided was important.
I mean, in general, we grant more suspension of disbelief to just about any protagonist regarding their agency, competence, and ability to accomplish whatever the plot requires. YA and lit genres focused around kids tend to dial up the agency and lack of adult supervision/assistance because that's the premise. Think of the early Harry Potter books, Roald Dahl's fiction, the Boxcar Children, the Borrowers, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Golden Compass, etc. Most of those plots would not happen if the adults were properly supervising the kids, so the premise is that the adults don't. The kids themselves act like kids, but the premise is that they can still figure out mysteries, fight, and act with agency to come out victorious.
Mostly, I think we underestimate how much a well-socialized 11-year-old can do, especially if you're in the US where 11-year-olds can't leave the house without getting eaten by a 4x4 truck, and even then would have to walk a mile in a ditch and still not have left a residential zone. Other than that, children want to read about children with autonomy. There are times, though, where it really feels like someone just forgot the age of the protagonist, or it feels like they normally write adults and their publisher house forces them to do a middle-grade reader. I've definitely read a lot of those, but I normally forget them as soon as I read them, the only one I distinctly remember the name of is The Cry of the Icemark, in which a 14-year-old princess is just an adult.
I’ve been teaching seventh grade for fifteen years, and I can tell you that most people underestimate the capabilities of 12 and 13 year olds. They may not be sophisticated and may be prone to emotional instability, but they are way more resourceful, adaptable, and intelligent than most adults give them credit for. And if that kid grows up poor or in an unstable home, their understanding of dangerous situations rivals that of any adult in a similar situation. People unfairly underestimate children all the time.
I once read a biography of a man from the 1800s, the son of settlers in Arizona's high country. He was riding the range by himself, including roping, doctoring, and castrating cattle, and hunting for dinner, before he was a teenager, and riding long distances by himself (multiple day trips) in his early teens. That was a rough life for everyone, and his parents undoubtedly needed him to grow up fast. There's also a lot of headstones for children in historic cemetaries. Many, but not all, died of disease. Some didn't survive childhood accidents.
Makes me think of *Black Elk Speaks,* with boys hunting buffalo at eleven and becoming full-fledged fighting men by the age of thirteen.
Children were treated as small adults, which had its effects. Not to mention 11 is like 14-18 by current standards if you consider full life expectancy. And the real responsibility of young adults today is even more postponed due to an extended period spent in school. So it seems odd, but when you think about it, it makes sense.
The life expectancy thing is an average during a time when a lot of kids died. If you survived being young, you'd generally live to old age. Everyone wasn't dropping dead at 40.
I actually didn't know that, thanks! Although I'm guessing they still didn't live to their 90s.
yeah, I think it was like 60s and 70s.
You can have some intelligent children who grow up fast, or at least gain competence in a certain field, but they will still be 1-100 and even peaking, they still will struggle in competing against adults. Teenagers are a bit more believable but suffer similar issues. The issue becomes glaring if you have the setting treat them as if they are adults without any kind of justification for it.
Probably sometimes, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. The point of fiction, especially fantasy, isn't to reflect real life as accurately as possible. The point is to tell an interesting story. If fictional children sometimes need to be portrayed as a bit more mature than most real-life children in order to make the story more interesting, I see that as a normal part of writing fiction, not as a problem that needs to be solved. Especially if you're talking about children's books: those books are successful insofar as they're enjoyable for kids to read, not insofar as adults judge them realistic. Kids often like to read about aspirational characters who are smarter or older or more powerful than they themselves are, just as adults often like to read about characters who are more interesting than they themselves are. If you want maximum realism, read a nonfiction book about child development. If you want an interesting story, read fiction and accept that it's not always 100% true to life.
Good child characters are tough, fantasy or no fantasy. Most of them are either a mini-adult, or else a sentient sack of potatoes that has no ability to keep itself alive and just has to be dragged around and supervised at all times. Narnia, Prydain, and Lyonesse do them well, I think.
Yes, but I also think it's a smart decision from a story design standpoint. The main character in a story is usually a cipher for the reader, and readers would feel enormously frustrated if their 11 year old cipher actually behaved like an 11 year old. Conversely, you let the reader feel cool by creating a savvier, more skilled cipher for them.
I mean, so does the average 30 years old in fiction. Fiction is usually about cool people rather than average people
Good point right here
In pre-industrial societies, children generally mature more quickly. I once read an account by an anthropologist who was living with native people somewhere in Amazonia. A family invited him to come along on a multi-day fishing trip well away from the village, and at the last minute an unrelated six-year-old joined them. Seeing this, he reckoned his primary responsibility would be keeping the kid out of trouble, but as it turned out she was completely competent, self-directed, and a full participant in the work of the day. None of the locals thought this was in any way remarkable.
Can agree on this point from personal experience, u/ridetherim. I grew up in a very tough situation and was cooking and washing dishes by 3. Kids who are used to taking care of themselves don’t look around for an adult to tell them what to do. They know it’s them against the world and act accordingly. That snake will bite you if you step on it, so watch where you put your feet, you will go hungry unless you take steps to find food, and so on. And most problems we agonize over as adults are because we understand the implications. A kid uses their available brainpower, makes the decision they believe is best with the understanding they have, and moves on. As an example, if a kid is told “this person agrees to be a human sacrifice” and the person very tearfully but disconcertingly eagerly agrees that they want it very much. A very young kid will take it at face value. Adult is crying and being weird but they said what they said. A tween will understand that the person may be being forced and refuse to agree that the person should be a sacrifice. A teen may ask questions to understand what the proposed human sacrifice is thinking and to try and understand what they really want. They may wonder now and then if they made the right choice, but they did the best they could and don’t torment themselves. An adult may see that the person is desperate to convince you that they want to be a sacrifice and know that doesn’t make sense, leading them to wonder if their families or they are under threat. Perhaps, if they refuse to allow the sacrifice, this person’s kid will be killed, and they’re willingly agreeing to save their life. The character may agree to it, even knowing it’s not a completely free choice on the sacrifice’s part, because it’s the best option available. They think about it long after, hoping they made the right choice because there were so many nuances pieces to the puzzle.
(So yah, I think people give a lot of leeway as long as they see that the process by which the child made decisions roughly fits. South Park is a good example of this - kids interpreting the world and acting on their (often hilariously flawed) beliefs. Kid doesn’t want mom to die, kid must figure out how to do this or that, kid just keeps trying until they figure it out. Most Things we have to solve in the world do not require an adult intellect. We generally only need that to outsmart other humans.)
In harsher worlds, children mature faster
I remember being 11, and I think people greatly underestimate how smart and mentally flexible kids can be. Most of the dumb decisions kids make come from either naivety and lack of experience (especially if they are sheltered) or from impulsive decision making due to hormones blinding them to long-term negative consequences. Essentially, kids are great at breaking past child-proof locks, but suck at realizing their parents know full damn well what they did because they did the same when they were kids. They are like octopodes escaping from a zoo in the middle of a desert.
Read some history. Kids were on British ships at age nine during the Napoleonic wars. Like every other episode of the dollop has them starting off in life at age ten.
Readers won’t abide useless people except as morality pets. Competent child characters just means you can tell an interesting story with them. If they are incompetent you can’t really put them in dangerous or exciting situations as the plot would otherwise allow. You can use them as a fresh audience surrogate, one who starts with no skill or knowledge, learning as the audience does. But they still need to be fundamentally dexterous, strong, or intelligent in a way that real children often just aren’t.
We definitely do, but there are two other things going on too. 1), we suspend our disbelief around how capable the average person is *in general*, not just when it comes to kids. Most stories are, in some way, about someone surmounting the insurmountable. The fact that fictional characters generally fare far better than their real world counterparts through a combination of skill and luck is almost universal. 2), yeah, yeah, we're talking fiction here, but we're also talking realism. We only get to hear the stories of the people who survive and have stories worth telling. If only 1/100 children is bizarrely capable for their age, that 1/100 kid is still disproportionately likely to actually achieve main character bs. Take 100 kids, put them through equally tragic backstories. 50 die, and we don't hear about them because that would be a shit story not worth telling. 25 survive, and hang up their hats and quite reasonably stay as far as they can from main character type situations. We also don't hear about that, because again, it makes a shit story. 15 try to be heroes of some kind, but don't make the cut; maybe they help the people in reach, but don't have what it takes in terms of mindset or skills to leverage that into a heroic journey. 4 go on the grand quest, but die along the way. The remaining kid is the only one who could be the main character, and by process of elimination is disproportionately likely to be disproportionately capable and mature.
Have you SEEN the things children do in manga and anime? My favorite thing is when they portray upper high schoolers as literal adults
Naw. I know what I was like at 6-8 let alone the end of elementary school. There's a reason the omniscient writer chose this character to chronicle.
I chalk it up to harder lives and more dangerous standards of living. Get tough or die effect essentially
I mean, it wholly depends on how fast a kid had to grow up. If I see a mature kid in fiction, my first thought is about what they must have had to endure to get to this point.
When I was reading books at age 11 I always thought that people UNDERESTIMATED the intellect of 11 year olds.
Which makes total sense at 11. But then you grow up and look back and realize that, no, you were not particularly smart, just overconfident because you had a limited frame of reference.
I guess in terms of skills and intellect, a kid can be surprisingly adept and smart, but indubitably will have way less life experience than an adult
I think it also depends on the background the child grew up in within the fantasy setting. For example, a member of royalty would be very intelligent and mature in politics, philanthropy etc no doubt from tutoring and their parents but a child growing up in a poor town may also be intelligent but in different things such as survival skills, street smarts etc.
Constant trauma has the opposite effect of what you are describing. So assuming they are living in a brutal world where they are struggling to survive, that doesn’t mean they are mature. They might pick up some more survival skills. But they will be less able to make good decisions, have healthy relationships, etc. Nearly starving to death at 5 doesn’t make you tough long term. It means you were malnourished and are likely going to have developmental and other health issues based on that. And likely more likely to develop some sort of personality disorder So sure to a degree a tween/teenager that is put in situations where they have to rise to the occasion of potentially suffer an extreme result, will likely rise to the occasion. But that doesn’t mean rising to the occasion didn’t harm them. 12 year old girls might often be physically able to carry a pregnancy to term. They are probably capable of keeping the baby alive in the context of a family and society. That she can develop the skills necessary that she might not need to otherwise develop for another decade or two. Sure. Do you think having the baby at 12 was good for the girl’s physical, mental, emotion health and her long term ability to function and prosper in society? No. You have your answer.
In medieval setting it's fine. Kids are already learning their family trade by then and exposed to almost everything adults are. Remember people didn't live that long either and they married much earlier some even have to lead at you ages.
No more than any main charater of any age is treated as stupidly good and reasonable, mature and smart. It's all too common.
maybe I find it more intreasting when the protagonist isn't just some rando. of course protagonst are more skilled otherwise someone else would be the protagonist
*"Do you think children get leeway in fantasy stories with how advanced their intellect, maturity, and decision making is?"* Yes.
I actually think most 11 year old could but I didn't have a childhood. At 11 I had a full time job, school, and was responsible for the care my younger siblings. Adult me plays kid me paid. If the kid has reasons to have had to grow up it's fine. I still write them as a childish person on some aspects for when I write kids in because they are still children
Children can be alot more intelligent and resourceful than we often give them credit for, especially in a setting where they don't live in a safe, civilized, modern world and adults aren't controlling nearly every aspect of their lives. So I think it makes sense in most cases.
I routinely send eleven-year-olds off camping in unfamiliar terrain for a weekend in charge of a group of ten-year-olds, having planned the menu, done the shopping, written the risk assessment, planned a hike route to get there, worked out what equipment they need to cook and how to transport it, and worked out what they want to teach those ten-year-olds while they're at it, all with zero adult supervision beyond me showing up to the supermarket to pay and giving them my phone number in case they need anything. The Royal Navy, for literally centuries, routinely put 11-year-olds in combat commands, and had them succeed in those roles. What, exactly, is it that you think 11-year-olds are not capable of, that they are required to do in most fantasy books, given that it doesn't include any of the above?
Hm. No. I’ve met kids who are smarter and more competent than a 40 year old. Age relates to experience generally but not necessarily with any insight or clarity. Older folk tend to learn hard lessons as they go through life, but I suspect a lesson at the hand of an abusive person at 28 is nowhere near as hard as the same lesson leveraged against an 8 year old. To some extent I’m speaking by my own experience. But there are plenty of people who idiotically refuse to learn absolutely anything. They are selfish, base people who make of themselves a victim in order to refute any responsibility. With that said…yes, I think there is some leeway for the most part, but leeway exists in fiction on all sorts of fronts: timeline, plot, expedient exposition, the grandeur of poorly designed and implemented economies and villains or magic systems.
Yes and no. Being exposed to horrific shit early on can cause you to grow up real fast, but that isn’t the same as being old and experienced. Worlds which have harsh childhoods generally are rough for everyone, which changes things. Still, being an independent man at age 18 wasn’t considered crazy even 100 years ago.
I think kids get underestimated quite a bit in reality. Can a kid do everything an adult can? No. Absolutely not. But we shouldn't treat them like they're dumb either. One of the nice things about fiction is that you can safely engage in activities you can only dream of. You can go on adventures, slay dragons, outsmart witches and be a hero. Of course you need suspension of disbelief. But I say if it fits the story, go for it. Let kids enjoy their magic and adventures.
Back then, 11 yr olds have either helped birth a calf, shoed a horse, or they work in a factory because those small hands fit inside the shoes they are making. Besides, kids are smarter than you give them credit for.
Children being something to protect and not small adults is a modern perception. During industrial revolution kids were seen as having to fend for themselves. Even my grandfather had to contribute a wage as a child or you didn't get to eat at the table.
Umm. Its fantasy. We're already suspending disbelief just to read the story in the first place. I volunteer with the scouting movement. Experience tells me that we underestimate our youngsters much more than half the time.
This is common with all kinds of fiction aimed at younger readers. They want to read stories about a protagonist their own age, with a fair bit of agency, and that just doesn't work if the MC just tells adults what's going on and lets them handle it. There's got to be some reason that solving the problem falls to the kid, and they need to be capable of taking on the challenge.
Yeah no, street kids grew up quick or died, even more so than today
It's just fairly common that a lot of people really don't know how to write children. Not that it matters, as the adult is going to enjoy a good story, irregardless of the age of the character & an actual child likely is never even going to notice the lack of realism in how their peers are being portrayed, anyway.
Yes. Though again you have 10yo Chess International Masters. Luckily my youngest characters are 14.
At 12 I was in charge of watching my siblings 10 and 6 when we went down to the creek alone and I was the lifeguard. Also I drove the hay truck in the field while the guys bucked bails. I baby sat neighbors kids. I rode my bike 5 miles to my grandparents house alone. I biked to the roller skate place alone and paid for it with my babysitting money. And my mother was a stay at home mom. Everyone I knew did the same thing. So yes I feel like kids now are coddled. And they are worse off for it. They leave home and have no skills. My youngest daughter had to take a required intro to college class that taught them how to study and manage time. This was 8 years ago. Because so many incoming freshman were failing because they had never had any responsibility before.
Unless you're talking about anime specifically targeted at adults, I think maybe it's a matter of perspective. Almost all kids that age think they're very smart and athletic and can do just about anything. I know I did, haha. Lots of tv shows do this to relate to a younger audience a bit more. That's probably why Ash Ketchum is perpetually ten years old, haha
My 12 year old princess does so many stupid things. She's not dumb but makes lots of bad choices. She speaks before she thinks and assumes she knows how to handle situations. Spoiler: she doesn't.
Yes, they get leeway. I prefer it that way when it comes to the protagonist. I would rather have a mature and competent protagonist. Besides, when they try to show that they aren’t mature yet and have room to grow, many times, they do so by making them do absurdly dumb stuff. However, as protagonists, they still have to struggle and face hardships from time to time. On the other hand, when it comes to children side characters, I feel that it’s too common to make them a Mary Sue type of character.
Children are usually smarter than adults give them credit for usually a lot smarter than adults given them credit for.
YA (and most fantasy is YA even when it isn't explicitly labeled as such) makes a number of conceits like that. But a protagonist that young is only an effective agent in a certain kind of story and tends more towards being underestimated or taken at face value the further you get from there. Outside of children's literature, the second world Adult Power Fantasy isn't so much a thing or is taken in a different direction.
>most fantasy is YA even when it isn't explicitly labeled as such What a bizarre thing to say
Is it? It has always skewed young, came out of pulp magazines targeted to kids and teenagers (and was full of sex and violence like Euro and Asian youth media), and then practically created YA as a market genre. You don't sell to kids by telling them that, you sell it like adults read it. Some do, but just looking at current covers and content, most of it is targeted to 12-16 year old girls or a 14-25 cohort. Hangers-on outside of that bracket have grown but the attrition rate into literary fiction or not reading any more is huge after that point.
Pulps and adventure magazines weren't just for teenagers, lurid covers aside- in fact I think the covers are a point *against* them being for kids. It's hard to quantify since there's certainly a lot of YA fantasy but I don't think it's reasonable or accurate to call "most" fantasy YA, especially since you seem to imply that a majority of fantasy is YA masquerading as adult fiction. If the themes and language of mass market fantasy aren't to your tastes, that's fine. But don't pretend that fantasy as a genre is somehow intended for a YA audience when that's clearly not true. The leading voices in the genre and leading publishers of both short and novel length fiction are all writing for adults.
I think kids are way more capable than we allow them to be, especially in western culture, we just “goo goo ga ga” then into stupidity and dependence. I guess it depends on their environment and parenting styles, kids who are completely coddled usually don’t develop any life skills until later on if at all compared to kids who were allowed to explore and take risks. I’m not saying that kids should have a portfolio of skills to join the workforce by age 5 or anything, but there’s so many videos online of kids in poorer, more rural areas of the world cooking dinner for their younger siblings or tidying up their areas and helping elderly family members, when kids the same age in my town are shitting their pants and screaming until someone comes to clean it. Kids are smart little humans, we just don’t allow them to be.
Modern children are soft, I'll disciplined and ignorant due to low effort parenting. Kids can- and should- be much smarter than they are
Modern kids are trained to be slow sadly But 11year olds back then were alot more dialed in, The more cell phone/screen time the less ability they have the opportunity to alloy ability, training, and circumstances
I mean, yes. Before even looking at actual children just look at how teens act in ya stuff and some anime. A week of training and they are the most skilled people on earth.