Kids: More Than Just Cute Faces

The Endless Struggle with Realistically Written Child Characters

In writing, young characters are often cast aside in favour of the more interesting, more complex or more knowledgeable grown-up characters. This neglect of adolescents is a real shame because I would argue children could be the more complex characters. As is often the comparison made, children are sponges. They are constantly absorbing what’s happening around them. They’re effectively still learning about the world.

Often, when a story includes a child somewhere, they’re given some vague characteristics and cast aside. Usually, that child falls into one of three categories I may-or-may-not have just made up: the bratty youngster, the wise-beyond-their-years counsellor or the baby-faced-and-voiced kid solely there for the “aww, so cute” factor.

Children are multi-faceted beings. If you think back to your own childhood, you’ll realize this. Sure, maybe you were that bratty youngster, but surely there was a reason for that. You weren’t just a brat for the sake of being a brat (if you were, sorry for this generalization, and also, I hope you’ve evolved from that).

Here is a great post that discusses different age groups and how they think, speak and behave. It provides a lot of useful information and tips for effectively writing children.

A few pieces of writing (books, TV shows, movies) come to mind when I think of child characters. Some of these young characters are good, and some are bad.

Quick Disclaimer

I’m opting to ignore child characters in media created specifically for young audiences. Those characters are usually portrayed very unrealistically, but for a good reason. With children’s media typically meant to be educational, it makes sense for the characters to be well-rounded and well-behaved. I’m also choosing to ignore the glaring exception to this, Caillou, as I’d prefer to keep pretending that particular character doesn’t exist.

image courtesy of pinterest

The Bad

When I think of a frustratingly written child, I think of Jamie Scott from One Tree Hill (I recently showed the…interesting 2000s teen drama to my roommate, so it’s fresh in my mind).

Jamie doesn’t show up until halfway through the series. The show’s fifth season is set four years after the finale of the fourth season. The baby born at the end of season four is now a fully-fledged person. But I digress.

Jamie Scott perfectly embodies the second category I named above: the wise-beyond-their-years counsellor. He’s four years old, yet somehow, he’s the one with the best nuggets of wisdom. I’m pretty sure every single thing he says is meant to be seen as so very smart. I’ve worked with kids of all ages, and let me tell you, four-year-olds are not all that wise. Sure, they might occasionally say something inadvertently smart and profound. For the most part, though, they’re laughing about butts and pretending they don’t know who drew on the wall.

image courtesy of indy week

The Good

Now, the good – or better, at least. Emma Donoghue did a terrific job of writing from the perspective of a five-year-old boy, Jack, in her novel (and its 2015 film adaptation) Room. The story is about Jack and his mother and their lives confined to a small room.

Jack encapsulates the curious child. He asks questions, but he also knows a lot. He often explains what he understands about his tiny world. It quickly becomes clear to the audience that Jack is in a bad situation. This is not clear to Jack. He’s just the innocent kid. He spends his days with only his mother, playing games as they pass the time any way they can in their limited space. He’s having fun and enjoying being a kid.

Jack also has his less pleasant moments. He has tantrums. He screams. He cries. He doesn’t listen. This is real. He’s acting like a real kid. Jack’s not just one thing: happy-go-lucky, obnoxious, scared, sad, angry or pretty much any emotion under the sun. He is all of them. Just like you. Just like me.

In Conclusion…

I could go on and on about badly written and well-written children. There are so many child characters out there waiting to be analyzed, after all. For the sake of time, I will just say: don’t write children off. They bring a lot to a story besides just being props.

---

image courtesy of allstar/disney

Lillian

Lillian is a second year Professional Writing student who has devoted much of her life to immersing herself in different worlds through the eyes of a variety of characters. Some characters she’s loved, some she’s hated, some she’s loved to hate and some she’s hated to love. It’s all in the name of research.