Say you raise a child in an upbringing where there’s no Sesame Street, no kid’s cartoons or books, nothing “for kids” - instead, all their books are grown-up stuff like textbooks, Hemingway, etc. and their movies are all serious, no kid’s shows, etc. (They still get taught all the basics, of course, like ABCs.)
Is this likelier to result in a kid that is unusually mature for his or her age, ahead of peers, or rather, a child who is stunted in development?
You know I’ve always been a little creeped out by child stars (like from a sitcom). Everytime I see one in an interview or out take, it’s like an adult in a little body.
My theory is this is bc they are not being exposed to other children or child like things.
It’s hard for me to imagine how a kid could be taught to read with nothing but adult level textbooks around. Maybe the exceptionally brilliant child, but most need to start with easier books.
Here’s some websites about how children were once taught to read:
I would say that imagination would step in and allow the child to create its own play world. Brain pathways are not hardened and children look at things very multi=pathed without a sense of what is the correct/best way to do this but more like what can I do with this. They are hardwired for play.
Sheldon 
Stunted, IMO. We developed children’s media over time as a response to evolving pedagogy.
But the OP also assumes all adult stuff is “serious” and not e.g stoner comedies and Douglas Adams and Monty Python and superheroes…
They could watch Looney Tunes and Three Stooges. They’d be fine.
Isn’t that large chunks of human history and prehistory?
That is, I’m sure kids were taught, and given or shown how to make tools that fit their smaller hands and bodies. And there were rites of passage. But children learned mostly by working with older children and adults.
I do think this society tends to assume that children of various ages aren’t capable of things that many earlier societies considered them capable of. This probably leads to delayed maturity, but I’d guess also to higher survival rates.
Well, that’s me, for instance, since Sesame Street debuted on July 21, 1969, when I was seventeen. The further you go back you find that childhood as we think about it was a very recent invention. You can argue about how good an invention it was, but it was definitely an invention:
Well, it is for children’s books and Sesame Street but toys appear to date back to antiquity: balls, dolls, marbles, miniature figurines, etc
Were they only for children, though?
Adults have certainly played games with balls for a very long time; and I wouldn’t be surprised if adults in some societies play with marbles – come to think of it, I’ve got a game somewhere, I think intended for adults and certainly played by some adults, in which the board pieces are marbles. Modern miniature figurines are more of an adult thing. The dolls might have been for children, on the grounds that adults had actual babies to hold on to; but children, or at least girl children, also generally carried live babies as soon as they were physically big enough.
I assume some were, as much as anything is. Also, each is a broad category: “Dolls” in a sense includes everything from rag dolls to Bratz to thousand-dollar creepy realistic baby dolls. I can’t believe some ancient guy wasn’t carving a wooden animal (or baking one out of clay, etc) with the intent of giving it to his kids even if other figurines existed for other purposes.
I’d say the child, especially if they’re not alone (they have sibling/s), would turn out completely normal. Because their brains are little learning machines and they’ll make connections, play with each other, and explore their environment whether it’s painted vibrant colors with cartoon characters or it’s literally a garbage dump with smoldering fires.
My kids have no outside toys whatsoever. They’ll still spend hours at a time making up games and finding their own toys (sticks are a common one). Chase insects and frogs, build forts out of cardboard and other debris, spin around until they’re dizzy and squeal their heads off; they usually complain when it’s time to come in.
We used to live close to their grandparents who had some nice kid toys. But we moved away years ago and left the toys behind; rather than sit around staring at the wall deprived they just make use of what’s around the grown-up house now. They’ve created a collection of milk jug and bottle lids, like finding markers/pencils and drawing, build inside forts out of pillows and blankets, and especially like giving me a headache when they find a piece of string or rope (whip it around, tie it across the stairway, etc).
Watching videos on third world countries, unless there’s a bad war or disease wave going on, shows kids goofing around and playing just like in first world countries; they don’t need their environment set up in a child-friendly way to develop normally.
In my opinion, for what it’s worth, most of children’s media is developed in the quest for profits. And the parents’ pandering to it is in lieu of actual parenting.
That’s a pretty broad brush. Virtually all media is aimed at making a profit, and the “children centered” portion isn’t any worse, on average, than anything else. Some of it is fantastic l, and we have great conversations analyzing it. Most is trash. But so is most of everything.
Not most people; or most cats; or most trees, unless the definition’s written by a lumber company . . .
So was Mr. Dibble’s statement. Maybe he was thinking of Sesame Street and its ilk, but that’s a tiny portion of what is presented to children via media. My statement was offered as counterpoint, to remind folks that most of it is meretricious trash.
No, I was thinking of all children’s media, and mostly books. Children’s books as a separate genre weren’t developed by people who were all out for profit - not that they weren’t profitable, but that was not the primary motivation of your Enid Blytons and Beatrix Potters, or even further back, wasn’t the primary motivation of John Newbery either.