How do you write children in a story?

The one thing I like to stop and think about when writing children is: 'How big is their world?'

Kids grow up in a world much smaller than ours. Some of them only exist in their house and their school. They may visit other places but the world they think of as theirs is just a few small rooms. They want to feel safe in those spaces, exert control over them, and consider change to anything in them as very important.

This extends to how they see the world as well. A kid may look at a billboard and see a clown on it. They point their finger and tell their mom, 'Mommy, look at that clown!'

The mom, however, has a couple extra decades of experience and schooling and a clown doesn't really interest her. She may look at the same billboard anyway, because she wants to make the child happy, but she notices the movie studio seal and the name Stephen King along the bottom. She will probably have very different feelings about that clown then her daughter did.

A child's world is smaller than ours, simpler, and more direct. They see the surface and often don't understand that there may be something under that, so when you want to write like a child, think about the surface, the first layer, about what is seen, but not interpreted. The child will yearn to understand more, however, and they will try their best to grasp the next level... until they are teenagers, then they know they know everything.

As they get older that world expands, the layers increase. First they learn about words and talking, then they learn to lie, then they learn that adults see through their lies. Their world evolves and grows as they gather information. Each age is an extra layer, a slightly bigger world, a greater awareness of what happens when they throw an empty cup on the ground.

A very young child won't think about the cup.

A young child is upset that the cup fell. They want the cup.

A child knows she might get in trouble for dropping the cup. She blames her sister.

An older child picks up the cup and tries to clean it, knowing that she dropped it and she should try to clean it.

A teenager curses, grumbles, cleans it up half-way, THEN blames it on her sister.

Anyhoo, those are my thoughts. Hope they help!