I think what the OP is asking is, are tropes that apply to children flexible enough to apply to teens, unless otherwise stated (for example Child Prodigy which set the cutoff at 12, while Teen Genius is 13-~18/20)?
I have question involving this same core question that may even be more exaggerated than the OP's. Currently, LightNovel.Ive Been Killing Slimes For Three Hundred Years And Maxed Out My Level contains the following example:
- Child Prodigy: Falfa and Shalsha are chronologically 50 years old, but look, act, and have the emotional maturity of small children. This does not stop them from being incredibly smart, with high level academic knowledge on various subjects like math and history, along with adult-level reading comprehension.
I'm under the impression that the author intends the reader to see them as kids, but regardless, Really 700 Years Old works in this universe...
Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra NovaRather than hard age limits, I think it would depend on whether or not puberty has hit in earnest. Because of puberty-associated baggage, the stereotypes for older teens are very different than those for younger teens, who as you pointed out are generally more in line with preteens. I personally wouldn't think too much about Cheerful Child applied to a 13-year-old but might consider a 17-year-old misuse, for example.
Yep.
Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 17th 2020 at 10:33:21 AM
In a narrative sense there are basically two types of teenagers, breaking out of adolescence (dealing with more complex social interactions) and on the cusp of adulthood (insecurities over the responsibilities expected of them). There isn't a hard line when it comes to these tropes as hard lines tend to be inconsistently enforced, but there isn't some magical change from 12 to 13 with how a character is or can be written. In some sense, people would call anyone below the age of 20 a child, but spiritually there is a difference between someone who is expected to be self-sufficient and someone who still must be protected. So it's more about how the character is portrayed outside of age-related tropes, as well as other tropes that are driven by the contrast between behavior and age. Adorably Precocious Child doesn't really work if they are about to graduate high school, same with Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
I'd go case-by-case. Is the character portrayed as more childlike? Are they portrayed as more adultlike? Do they use child stereotypes or teen stereotypes? That, moreso than age, determines what tropes apply.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallSo I'm assuming the only reason that tropes like Cheerful Child, Children Are Innocent or Littlest Cancer Patient aren't in the Teenage Tropes index is because their descriptions clarify that the character is usually under 13 (but not exclusively), whereas tropes like Kiddie Kid, Kid Hero and Children Forced to Kill confirm their common extension to teenagers in their descriptions (whereas the others are less commonly applied to teens)? I would ask the same about most of the entries in the Youngsters index that aren't already in the Teenage Tropes index, especially since the former is more so focused on 12-and-under kids and prepubescents especially, while the latter is exclusive to members of the 13-19 age range (however, it should be worth noting that there is overlap with the indexes as most of the teen-exclusive tropes in Teenage Tropes are also in Youngsters - but not the other way around - which I find unnecessary since the teen index was meant to be a sub-index to Youngsters as adolescence is a separate physical and mental state in yet the same legal category as childhood).
Edited by Tacotoon11 on Jun 18th 2020 at 4:18:57 AM
Well Cheerful Child, Children Are Innocent and Littlest Cancer Patient all deal with childhood innocence and most teen tropes deal with shedding or growing out of that aspect. Not saying that teenagers cant be an examples but there is a reason why these things are associated with younger children and not so much teenagers
Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 18th 2020 at 10:17:45 AM
Macron's notesSomething I've specifically noticed is some tropers seem to be obsessively removing Would Hurt a Child examples that apply to teenagers, which feels a bit odd. Perhaps it's because I'm in my 30's now, but an adult assaulting a teenager feels just as underhanded as assaulting a child.
It even brings up some Unfortunate Implications in some cases (for example, removing the examples from Life Is Strange 2, since teenagers of colour being described as adults when they're subject to violence is a well documented issue).
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer^ Well, Would Hurt a Child says in the description that "Violence to teenagers, with the exception of those in their early teens, isn't an example either because teenagers are stronger than children and lack the completely defenseless element, especially if Teens Are Monsters. However, teenagers harming children applies." So it seems to me that 13 and 14-year-olds would count as victims of Would Hurt a Child (even if they can be perpetrators of it too towards younger children), but not 15-17 year olds as they are post-pubescent and tend not to be as physically vulnerable as early teens.
However, I've never really been fond of the paragraph on that trope about teenagers barely counting and have been thinking about either removing it or noting that pre-teens harming younger children (specifically babies or toddlers) definitely counts as much as teenagers doing so to make the definition fair because pre-teens as well are much stronger than the littlest or kids and definitely have the ability to cause serious harm to an infant.
Treating teenagers as adults is a deeply harmful practice that has been trending increasingly over the past few decades. That said, they are also not children in the sense commonly used. Teens occupy their own distinct developmental period and should be treated as such. A teen can harm a child, but also be subject to harm from adults, and each is a separate issue.
More practically, not all tropes with the word "child" in the name apply in the same manner. For example, Child Soldiers most definitely applies to teens (at least up to the standard age of military service, which depends on time and place). Child Prodigy, by contrast, explicitly says it applies to children under 13. Context matters.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 18th 2020 at 9:21:54 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm not sure about that one. It could easily be substituted with Teens Are Monsters depending on the child's level of creepiness, but one odd thing that struck me about that one is that the Playing With examples list a 16-year-old in the Downplayed section, when I normally rarely see teen examples of mainly child tropes being over 15.
A rule of thumb would be: does the work treat them as children? I's say that matters more than some arbitrary age, especially when speculative fiction technically allow things like Really 700 Years Old kids or teens.

This is an issue that many tropers seem to have mixed opinions on, but do tropes relating to children (e.g. Cheerful Child, Children Are Innocent, Kids Are Cruel, Adorably Precocious Child) apply to teenagers as well? I'm not referring to tropes like Teens Are Monsters or Hormone-Addled Teenager whose names make it explicit that they're exclusive to teenagers (and most of the entries in Teenage Tropes for more examples); I'm referring to tropes with "child" or "kid" in them and wondering if they can extend to teens as well. I know a few of them documented in the aforementioned teen tropes index like Kid Hero can apply to both kids and teenagers, but I'm not sure about the rest of the tropes that are not there and otherwise documented under the more-prepubescent equivalent index Youngsters.
Does it depend on whether or not the trope description specifies an age limit? We usually think of children and kids as those 12 and under here (even though most pre-teens are biologically not children either as with teens: especially 12-year-olds, who tend to be indistinguishable from 13-year-olds) while leaving those aged 13-17 out of the child-related trope examples; the Cheerful Child and Littlest Cancer Patient pages for instance make it clear that that character is usually (but not exclusively) under 13. Also, most of the Playing With pages for child-related tropes use teenage examples under the Downplayed section as opposed to Played Straight, although they're rarely ever exemplified as Inverted or Averted, which tells me that teenagers might count for "child" tropes but should be prefaced with "Downplayed as s/he's a teenager".
I'm assuming that if there's an adolescent equivalent to the trope, then it should be used in place of the more prepubescent version rather than overlapping with it? For example, there's always a Hormone-Addled Teenager for every Dirty Kid, a Teen Genius for every Child Prodigy, a Teens Are Short for every Pint-Sized Kid and a Teens Are Monsters for every Kids Are Cruel. To add to more confusion, sometimes both the adolescent and child equivalent are used as examples if the teen is barely just starting puberty and still looks like a kid. Big Mouth for example exemplifies all the teen characters as both Hormone-Addled Teenagers and Dirty Kids because they're just entering puberty.
This is quite a mouthful, but I want to know if anyone has a countermanding answer to this quandary. I know tropes like Kid Hero and Kiddie Kid clarify that both children and teenagers apply to it, but I'm really not sure about the rest of the tropes especially if there isn't an adolescent-specific equivalent for it (Keet or Genki Girl can be used for cutesy teenagers just as much as they can be used in addition to Cheerful Child in the case of 12-and-under kids, but we don't have an adolescent-specific Cheerful Teen. We also don't have an adolescent equivalent to Children Are Innocent, rather insisting that Teens Are Monsters.) Likewise, sometimes teen-specific tropes will be used for child characters too if there doesn't exist a child equivalent to it either, like Phoneaholic Teenager being used because we don't have Phoneaholic Child, but that's beside my point.
Edited by Tacotoon11 on Jun 27th 2020 at 3:41:13 AM