Children are perfectly capable of all of the things you listed, have you forgotten what it was like to be one? They're certainly naive, less mature, less self-a

Children are perfectly capable of all of the things you listed, have you forgotten what it was like to be one? They're certainly naive, less mature, less self-aware, not as bright, and so on, but they're still there. They're still people, just an earlier form of what they'll grow up to be. I don't like the "my little Timmy is a one-of-a-kind snowflake genius!" trend either, but that idea is easily less harmful than the idea that children are mindless cattle driven purely by their id. If you treat children like animals, using only external motivation to guide them, don't be surprised when they act like them. If you actually talk to kids and try to get at their real interests and motivations, I bet you'd be surprised at what you find.