How is an adult different from a child?

Adults are much more like children than children are like adults. For many children, a truck is a Big Machine. They have not been able to understand for a long time that a truck is arranged for the transport of goods, and an ordinary passenger car is for transporting people. Similarly, for many adults, a child is a Little Adult. They do not understand that a child has other problems than an adult. Although an adult sometimes behaves and even should behave like a Big Child, a child is not a Little Adult.
The idea that a child is an adult in miniature could be called the idea of ​​a homunculus (a homosexual is a small intelligent little man).
What is the difference between a child and an adult? The baby is helpless. As he grows up, he becomes less helpless, but still depends on his parents, who need to teach him how to do different things. As he is taught to do this or that, he has new items to learn; but, as we have said, he cannot learn what his nervous system is not yet ready for. The time when various nerves mature, for example, the nerves of the legs or the intestines, depends on the quality of the nervous system inherited from their parents. If a child is born prematurely, it must sometimes be kept in an incubator device before his body is sufficiently ripe for a cradle.
Images in children are vague. At first, the child can only separate the outside world from himself. He learns to select individual objects, and his images become more accurate. Adults need many years of experience to clarify their images, and even after that they don’t distinguish so well essential items. The child has no such experience; while he learns, both he and his parents must exercise restraint and patience.