Danica McKellar (Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years" ) was very pretty as a child. Danica was adorable in The Wonder Years with her bangs.
But as an adult, not so much. Of course, it could be just because Danica stopped wearing bangs.
I may be alone here, but I think Danny Bonaduce is looking better as he ages than David Cassidy. I never saw that coming.
After some more thought, there was a young girl two doors away from me who was devastatingly pretty when she was around 8~11.
Family relocated but my youngest daughter still sees her occasionally and says she is no specially attractive anymore. She was a dreadful whinger and whiner, hope she has left that behind too.
Also my next door neighbour. Her daughter was very pretty until she hit her teens. She isn’t ugly now but you wouldn’t give her a second glance in the street either.
Ah, but a guy can have longer hair. And cultivate a beard. Reference Exhibit 2. Evens things out pretty well, I think.
I don’t think that’s the most flattering photo of her as an adult, but even there she doesn’t look bad and in other photos I’ve seen of her she looks lovely.
I have a cousin who was unattractive as a child. She had a round moon face and tiny eyes. As she grew older she lost her baby fat. By the time she was in high school she looked like a completely different person. Now she is as cute as a button. People are floored when they see photos of her as a child. Classic case of an ugly duckling, I suppose.
I was pondering the same thing. Big noses run (ha!) in my family. Mine is pretty big. My sister’s maybe even bigger (proportionally). My wife has a small button nose, though. I’m hoping that our daughter got the shnozz genes from her side, not mine. Certainly at age two and a half she has a cute little nose (and is generally absolutely beautiful, though I may be a tad biased 
), but I wonder how long it will be before we can tell whether she’s got daddy’s nose after all?
Adult beauty is itself ephemeral.
Run a couple of babies through a woman, or let a guy build out his paunch and the beautiful college student is yesterday’s dream.
On the other hand, some late bloomers are fabulously more stunning as they get older.
It’s hopeless to predict beauty at an early age, although I agree ugly is a lot more predictable. For example, very few fat kids turn out high on the pulchritude meter.
I would say puberty is the earliest. There are lots of features considered cute in children, which are unattractive in an adult (just look at poor Macauley Culkin), and the reverse is also true.