Acting their age (Was It's time to defend Ginny! (some SHIP)

[Steve <bboy_mn@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52407

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "serenadust <jmmears at c...>"
<jmmears at c...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Susanne <siskiou at e...> wrote:

>  Penny wrote:
> 
> > > ... my points has always been that Ginny *isn't* acting 
> > > her age in much of the canon descriptions of her!  
> 
> 
> 
> Susanne replied:
>  
> > I'm not sure what the problem would be with Ginny being
> > characterized younger than her age.
> > 
> > My own daughter is one of the oldest in her grade, but
> > she's "young" for her age.
> > 

> Jo Serenadust:
> 
> Actually the notion of Ginny "acting young for her age" has been 
> bothering me for some time now but I've never been able to put my 
> finger on why until now.
> 
> Ginny doesn't in fact act young for her age as much as Hermione (our 
> only basis for comparison in the books) acts "old."
> 
> The reason I say this occured to me when I suddenly remembered a 
> classmate of my daughter's.  She was/is a very bright only child, 
> one of the older children (January birthday in her case) in the 
> class, and she had interests that were quite different and 
> substantially ahead of the other girls.  In addition, her parents 
> treated her very much like a mini-adult in taking her to fairly 
> exotic restaurants and ... large edit...
> 
> Jo Serenadust, 

bboy_mn:

Jo, just out of curiousity is this girl in your daughters class an
only child?

I think that is something that should not be overlooked. Ginny is 7th
of 7 children, and all the older kids are boys. Hermione on the other
hand is an only child (as far as we know). 

Ginny spent most of her time on the farm (the Burrow) presumably with
nothing but her brothers for company. To some extent, having all those
older brothers is a luxury; you have lots of people to take care of
you and entertain you (as well as get you into trouble). While 
Hermione probably went to a fairly large diverse public school, and
was too some extent responsible for entertaining herself, or at least
consciously arranging entertainment for herself. True, it is a
generalization but an 'only child' tends to be more mature and
outgoing in certain ways.

I'm not saying this explains everything but I think it is without a
doubt a contributing factor in there difference in personalities.

We do see a similar difference between Harry and Ron. Harry is very
serious and introspective (all for good reasons), where as Ron being
the youngest of 6 brothers is more outgoing and much less serious. We
could just as easily say that Ron doesn't act his age, but doesn't act
his age compared to what; compared to Harry or compaired to kids in
general.

I admit I haven't been 100% on top of this Ginny thread, so if this is
old news, I apologies.

Just a thought.

bboy_mn