[HPforGrownups]Social skills (WAS: Hermione's attitudes, age, and SHIP/s...)

[monicawitt at msn.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 29894


> 
> Susann Schmid wrote:
> 
> IMO, it is also very important that Hermione is an only child. And 
as I've yet to see a poor dentist, we can also suppose that the 
family is very well off. If the Grangers are a bit like my own 
parents, maybe they didn't even send their precious and highly 
intelligent only daughter to a kindergarten, but hired a nanny 
instead. Hermione strikes me as the sort of child who has spent her 
early childhood exclusively in the company of adults, and in 
elementary school was incredibly bored by her peers. That would 
account for being bossy and for saying things like "Do you NEVER 
read?"- I suppose she spent a lot of her free time at home reading 
whatever she could get into her hands.

I hadn't thought of this. Maybe it's because I'm an only child. As 
for having had a nanny, maybe, but I was bookish and overbearing at 
school for years without one! ;) I think it's just the way she is, 
though. I remember a family that attended my school that was made up 
of four boys, and each one was very much the same way -- highly 
intelligent, eager to answer in class, principled, always had the 
answers, practically worshipped books, and no social skills to speak 
of until their mid-teens... Mom & dad were both doctors, and their 
children took after them quite strongly. I think of them a lot when 
Hermione's expounding on her latest interests. It's one of those 
things that could go either way...