The child’s mind is not a small version of the adult mind; it is a different kind of mind.

This line is commonly used in discussions of developmental psychology and early learning to emphasize that children’s thinking operates with different goals and constraints than adult cognition, rather than being merely less developed.

Children are not simply incomplete adults; their ways of perceiving, learning, and reasoning can be qualitatively distinct, so understanding childhood requires its own framework rather than adult-centered assumptions.