This troper was having verbose discussions with his parents and teachers about subjects like Causality, Philosophy, Politics, Objectivism, Religion, and the Afterlife by the time he was 13.

This Troper is 13. And... has been reading ElGoonishShive for ''years''. She also reads ExterminatusNow and There's Something About Tails. And was read novels at night, when other kids were being read Little Red Riding Hood. And used to use a lot words that her peers didn't understand, to the point that she has to train herself not to in order to have a conversation without people asking for definitions. Here's an example of a conversation she's had in an online chat room: ->'''Kat-The-Feline:''' I'm bored... ->'''Black-Rowz:''' r u relly 13? u type like a grown man! This Troper (13) has often been told by her teacher that she reminds her of a univeristy student and her friends have often told her to grow down.

This Troper really, really hates it when people go and type lazily. #QUOTE#liek dis man i can't stand it

In all seriousness people will point me out as a Grammar Nazi. I actually like typing in proper english over the internet. It makes me seem more mature and actually contributes to conversation over the internet, because no one will take any sort of "l33t sp33k" or "txt lingo" seriously. I just type in proper English because I want to stand out in the crowd and prefer to take the road less traveled.

'''''Thank''''' you! All these years, I Is Another}} thought I was alone.

This troper doesn's do it to stand out, she does it because that's the way she writes, and because half of the time, the social networks she uses are actually deviantART and various fanfiction and blogging sites. And on Fanfiction.net, she was always getting along better with the rare writers who are over 18, which isn't a big deal now that she's 16, but it's been like this for years now. This troper also practically co-raises her much younger sister along with her mother, but other than that, she doesn't see herself as mature at all, being a rather bad student and a Naruto fan. But appearanly, starting to analyse situations randomly when I have nothing to say, being a deadpan snarker (and not even full-time, not to mention that it sounds rather lame with a Russian accent) and reading books automatically makes me smart. At least according to all the people who are surprised when I get bad grades because they expect me to be smart.

This troper's mental age floats approximately four to six years in front of her chronological age; in other words, she acted like a teenager between about nine or ten and thirteen -- she spent several months posting on an internet forum at the age of eleven, and comes off like she's fifteen or sixteen in those archived posts -- and has acted like a young adult since she was approximately fourteen. (She's matured some more, or at least mellowed out, between 14 and her current age of 17, but this seems comparable to how people change in college.) Her circle of friends then and now (different groups) also support this hypothesis: at eleven she hung around with people in their mid-to-late teens and some college students, and now her friends range from 20 to 31. (She and the 31-year-old are outliers; the average age is 23 and a half.) As a side effect, at the time she didn't notice anything unusual about the kids in works listed under MostWritersAreAdults. However, ''wise'' is definitely not a word she would have used to describe herself before 14 or 15; she was naïve, myopic (both figuratively and literally), and acted like your standard bratty teenager.

This troper always had to be wise beyond his years, between being the only person teaching his little sister morals by the time he was in fourth grade (his sister is four years younger than him) to having studied his father's business practices by sixth grade. He has also always been mistaken for much older than his is (although at least part of this is because of his appearance, it does keep going even when talking to people) up to the point where he has never been carded (he doesn't drink, but he has had a couple of reasons to go into bars) and always having at least a few friends five to six years older than him (some of which he knew for years before they found out his real age because, well, they never asked)

This troper's mother got her a mental age test done at around seven. Troper herself can't remember the specifics of it, but apparently she ended up with a mental age of ''forty''-something. They concluded something had to be wrong. Right afterwards, Troper admitted to having been manipulating the test answers to her benefit, in order to increase the results.

This troper doesn't know about actual wisdom (though he believes he is ahead of most teenagers in that area as well,) but in terms of morality and philosophy I am far beyond my years and far beyond anyone I know (except maybe my parents) and most people I've heard of.

Wow, that sounds a lot like me. Though I was also often told that my reading and writing abilities were several years ahead of my age (and at seventeen, I can still write what are apparently university-level essays with less effort than I thought was necessary).

Same here. My reading and vocabulary are just about college level, although due to minor disability my writing skills leave a '''lot''' to be desired. As far as morality and philosophy go, I like to think I'm ahead of my peers in these areas.

Whenever I meet new people, they call me sixteen and my sister fourteen. I'm fourteen, she's seventeen.

@/{{Smerf}}: people keep thinking I'm between 4 and 10 years older than I actually am.

This Troper is an only child who really didn't interact with other children until she entered school. It's not that she acts older than she is (In reality, she still acts child like), but she can grasp abstract ideas (Quantum physics, anyone?) and she knows how to manipulate people so that she can get what she wants. For example, she self taught herself to read at four, but her parents didn't find out that she could read until she entered school. She had fooled her parents into thinking that she was illiterate so that they would keep reading books to her. The majority of her friends are at least a year or two older than she, but she somehow winds up being the TeamMom.

When this troper was two years old with genius IQ and a raving case of uncontrolled childhood bipolar, her mother was frequently asked, "How old is she, twenty?"

This troper started out as a fairly stupid child who began reading late but over time she gained momentum and outpaced her age so now at fifteen she is quite wise and can grasp complicated concepts that others her age group cannot. She is also quite mature and when she wants to, she can be very philosophical, to the point of discussing such things with her mother. Of course, being an introverted nerd with a rather...troublesome past does not help matters.

This troper is 17 (turning 18 in October). When I was 8 I was tested for different mental disabilities. They thought I had Asperger's (and I might, though I've never had trouble reading emotions), they determined that I was at a High School reading level at the time. My parents have both admitted that I'm more mature than my 46 year old aunt, for the record.

This troper is mentally and emotionally older than most people her age and has always gotten on better with adults. it seems intelligence, common sense, empathy, shyness, feeling like AllOfTheOtherReindeer, reading a lot, dyslexia and in early childhood having to learn what facial expressions meant because you didn't instintively know add up to this, and it always feels like a part of her is watching the rest of her (woo hoo, I'm a Discworld witch). This is a case of BlessedWithSuck. You're out of sync with most people your own age, and you find quite a few people older than you a bit silly, and your not an adult so you can't really get on with adults properly yet, because while I am old for my years I am still a ''teenager''. My family tells me this will get better.

This troper has been described as an "old soul". He's gotten along with his teachers more easily than his peers most of his student career and usually his teachers treat him as an equal, having serious discussions with him on the subjects being taught rather than just dispensing answers.

This troper wouldn't go as far as "wise", but my mother has said several times that I was 12 when I was born and just stayed ahead. I ''was'' reading by the time I was three, and always got along better with the teachers than the other kids ... but being a bully magnet will do that.

Did I enter this? ...No, I was reading by age ''two.'' The rest matches up, though!

This troper has been told by EVERYONE that she is a hell of a lot more mature then everyone in my grade. I am the only one who does not bitch about anyone, actually knows what my morals are and doesn't complain when one of my friends goes off to sit with someone else for one lunch time. Incidentally, I am the person that all my friends go to when they have problems and I have been told by all the teachers who deal in emotional intelligence or psycology that I am the most mature person they know. However, this leads to me constantly switching between different groups of friends because their maturity levels are different from mine and I just lose interest in the conversation as soon as it starts. Thus my friends think that I am "sick" or that something is wrong with me or that I'm just being a bitch. Oh yeah, I'm only 14.

This tropers is this trope and a subversion of this trope. People on usenet were suprised when it turned out i was only 17 (they thought i was 35+), some people on irc asked me if I was 50+, my girlfriend thinks my use of old fashioned words is cute and at my job in the library people think that someone my age just can't know the stuff I know about older (childrens) books, music, tv-shows and movies. This is all partly attributed to the age of my parents, who were pretty old to get their first kid back then and their taste in entertainment rubbed off on me and I have been reading a lot as well as a kid. Subversion: Other people think that my interests/sense of humour are childish, my taste in music is horrible old-fashioned/childish trite and that I'm curmudgeonly old fart at the fine age of 28. So yeah, take the good with the bad.

My Mother once said my brother and I were born thirty years old, and have only aged since. This made for extremely awkward teen years, as both of us really didn't care for teenagers at the time.

This troper has been asked a good handful of times about which university she's going to. Before she's even hit eighth grade. These people include a tour guide, a nineteen-year-old international worker, a traveler, several colleagues of her father, and that's just the beginning. On the Internet, the lowest people have guessed her age was seventeen (when she was twelve, and the ages have gone higher since). In her boarding school, people keep mistaking her for a junior or senior. In her camp, people make the same mistake. Because of this, the people her actual age hate her and think that she's a pretentious ass. It makes her wonder.

This troper is an incongruous mix of this and ManChild, while he has a mature and even spiritual perspective on things (he has been called an "old soul" by his NewAgeRetroHippie mother), he still remains somewhat like a young teen even though he has been told he can be a lot like someone aged over 40 (perhaps that's why his first lay was in her early thirties and had him when he was 21).

This troper, age 16, was reading at age three and has maintained a love for words, stories, and character analysis ever since. Casual study of the workings of the human race naturally followed, and with that a disdain for dumb decisions (even though I still make them). In middle school, my mom told me that teachers said I "tread a wide circle" around the other students maturity-wise. Proof I was still sort of immature? I didn't internalize this until I was 15, and spent most of my preteen years crying about how I wasn't cool enough to be friends with the girls that talked endlessly about their hair and handbags and probably wished I'd fall off the planet. Oh well.

This troper has been mistaken in both looks and attitude for a 28-30 year old. He's 22.

Hah! I can beat that, the above, but at 16 rather than 22.

This sixteen year old troper's been going on forums since she was about ten, and just about everybody on them who has tried to guess her age has guessed between 25-30. She can be a brat if she's in a bad mood, but she makes an active attempt to understand things because she really, really loves her mum and doesn't want to put her through the stress of another bratty teen (seriously, my older sister stressed ''me'' out, and I wasn't even the one who had to deal with all her moods and abuse). Also, peer pressure isn't nearly as influential over this troper's emotions and actions as adults led her to believe it was going to be, which is one of the pluses to this whole maturity thing. She still has a long way to go before she can call herself truly wise, she might not even get there before she dies (hopefully of old age and in her sleep), but this troper has come to the conclusion that maturity is more enjoyable than immaturity. Except where bubble wrap and drawing rude things on fogged up windows are concerned.

This troper has developed a weird hidden personality which randomly shows when normal-psyched people address him. Apparently, they expected him not to come up with subjective evasives when they asked what music he liked... It stems on his analysis of literary characters (coming in itself from a writer vocation) leading him to comprehend some of the more curious aspects of people. I do wonder why most parents expect their very young child to take responsibility when egocentrism is basic at their age. I recall writing an essay about why I refused to write a regular essay, which boiled down to an essay about a very bad essay... and it got accepted. This could go on for a while, but for one more instance, I have had personal experience leading me to conclude that complaining/boasting/refusing to learn/renouncing humanity among other things are always futile exercises in the end. Oh, did I mention I write novel outlines during my free time in school?

When this troper was eight, she came up with the job title she wanted as an adult: Interplanetary Anthropologist - a person who studied alien cultures. It didn't take long to figure out science wasn't even close to discovering alien life, though. Unfortunately. My parents always embarrass me with stories like that. One of them includes going to two birthday parties within about two weeks of each other. This was around the time The Little Mermaid came out (I must have been five), so, at the first party, this entertainer was dressed up as Ariel. At the next party, it was Alice in Wonderland. Within about two seconds, I recognised her, and said, "Hey! You're the woman who was at the last party! You were The Little Mermaid!" Nobody else had noticed it was the same person. Whoops. Beyond that, I've always had more in common with adults than people my own age.

This troper's choir director loved to tell people that she was "an eighty-year-old sage in a teenager's body." She frequently gets mistaken for being in her mid-to-late 20s (she's about to turn 20). She learned to read at the age of three.

Weirdly played with by this troper, who is 20, and is regularly told she has the brain of a fifty-year-old, but ''looks'' about fourteen. Age Dissonance?

This troper SO MUCH. I'm sick of all this "childhood" nonsense! Get on with college already!

When I was fifteen, my parents, my paternal grandmother and I were at a restaurant, and had to wait outside on these couches for a seat inside. Well, I was sitting on another couch since the one everyone else was on didn't have enough room, when a waitress came up and tried to offer me a choice of alcoholic beverage. Keyword: Tried. Also, I'm sixteen now and was sitting around a campfire one night with relatives and a boy whom I think one of my cousins had invited. He thought I was thirty-two. Granted, it was dark out, but still... I was very much offended.

In the forums this troper frequents, everybody thinks this troper is older than he is. It stems mainly from this troper's good grammar, snark, and intelligence. Some guy asked how, theoretically speaking, you would destroy the world. The smartest answer was to use the LHC to create anti-matter, which was highly implausible. This troper suggested using rocket engines to push the Earth into tidal lock with the Sun, thus burning one side of the Earth, freezing the other side, and creating powerful winds that would kill off anybody in the Twilight Zone. Alternatively, this troper suggested using a bit more force to push the Earth towards the Sun, and let it spiral in. The heat would kill off the inhabitants, and by the time Earth reaches the Sun's Roche limit, the tidal forces would rip it apart and there will be no evidence Earth ever existed.

This troper then concluded it with the lyrics to Pinky and the Brain. Instead of convincing people that this troper isn't capable of destroying the world, it convinced them that this troper is 10 years older than he really is. Darn.

I was described by a former girlfriend of mine as "18 going on 40." The description was intended to disparage - apparently she was (to borrow a crude internet neologism) butthurt that I didn't want to partake in the "total immersion college experience" that she so enjoyed (and trained as an orientation assistant to encourage incoming first-year students to embrace). Excuse me for having a fucking job and for lacking the time to get up-in-arms over the latest moral outrage ''du jour'', not to mention not having time to be at her every beck and call (she was, being a daddy's-girl only child from an upper-middle-class family, unaware of the concept of personal boundaries as well as the lines between "affectionate," "loving," "clingy," and "what the fuck is the matter with you?"). The fact that it was an RCC-affiliated college (what the damn was I thinking?) made it that much worse to be what the others saw as a non-conformist, all because I broke both the resident and commuter student molds by having a dorm room but also spending a lot of time away from the college at my job. And strangely enough, I fit in and interacted just fine with my co-workers who were mostly middle-aged librarians.

Though, come to think of it, a couple of those co-workers did occasionally use terms like "an old soul" and even "crotchety" to describe me from time to time. My mother's husband also once quipped that I was "too young to be that cynical." Funny thing is that I was trying to be optimistic and sunny for my mother's benefit. Guess that went over like the Hindenburg, huh?

This troper has a LikeBrotherAndSister friend, we're both interested in {{Anime}} and Japanese culture, and I often playfully address her with the Japanese word for ''older'' sister because of this trope. Yes, she's two years younger than me, but damn it, if I didn't have her to lean on I probably wouldn't be here today.

I have been described as a CuteShotaroBoy, and had a lot of problems in school because I would speak over the heads of everybody and had some problems interacting socially (some theorize I'm mildy aspergic). A recent psychometric test I did shows I am high-functioning.

Back in the fifth grade, This Troper never spoke much because most of her peers didn't understand half the words she used, interrupting every third word to ask for a definition. She also remembers getting into an argument on a forum where one of the people who supported her was asked if he were 12 years old (in a condescending manner). This Troper felt a bit odd that at 11, she was apparently constructing a better argument than someone most likely much older.

After reading many of the examples on this page, this (fourteen year old) troper has begun to seriously wonder if his own reasoning ability is better than average for his age, or if the anti-intellectualist philosophy abound in his community just runs deeper than he thought.

Being this kind of sucks - it reduces options for intimate friendships, since most of my (highschool; I'm a freshman) peers are... well, immature. I rarely get along with people my age. I've been told I "act twenty" - not an immature twenty year old, I hope! And on the internet, good grammar and a little common sense means you're automatically twenty-something.

This troper has been using the internet since he was 12 years old, and back then, he actually managed to convince some 20-ish year olds that he was about their age with his grammar and spelling nazi-esque dialogue and somewhat expanded vocabulary. Even now, people get confused when they learn he's 17 years old, since he can talk more like he's in his mid-to-late-20's. Ironically, while he sounds and acts mature, he's a natural babyface, so people also mistake him for being ''younger'' than he really is based on his looks.

This troper has been mistaken for a sixth former. She's 14 as of writing this and thinks she would be mistaken for someone older if she didn't look so young.

This troper can personally attest that this is a VERY bad combination with a myriad of mental problems, but ESPECIALLY anger management issues. good god... Im not a good fighter because of martial arts training, Im a good fighter because I react very poorly to people not doing absolutely everything right.

This Troper has always been this way. People always overestimate her age and grade level. It does not help that she spoke in LittleProfessorDialog for her entire childhood and still exhibits SesquipedalianLoquaciousness almost constantly. Now she's in high school, and most people she meets seem to think that she is a graduate student at first, despite the fact that she is 5'4" and sports braces and hair dye. Oh, and those silly "Real Age tests" that crop up everywhere on the Internet? In some fits of boredom she's taken a few, and she always gets a result far, far higher than her actual age.

She also has arguments with her dad about his on-again-off-again fiancee. They basically look like the typical "parent trying to guide their kid in relationships and make sure they don't get hurt" arguments... but with the ''teenager'' trying to help the ''adult.'' Unfortunately, he is entirely unreceptive.

Zig zagged by this troper. While I'm still pretty poor at looking after myself (case of point, I don't know how to use a washing machine. I'm hoping to go to college/university in about nine months, which means I'm seventeen), I've often asked questions that make no sense coming out of my mouth (complaining that the politics of the country I'm from is one thing, claiming that I could run the country better than the prime minister without having taken a single lesson about the subject is another. Pointing out the problems with the current law making process could also qualify. I'm a brit, if you're wondering). Also, I tend to employ longer words over shorter words, much to one of my friend's annoyance. I think I can kinda justify it, though: when my parents started to divorce while I was twelve, I was basically useful for making tea, while my younger sister was able to make cakes with reasonable success (I did help, but not much). During that time, I forced myself to improve, with the result that, when I was legally able to make my own decisions about who I wanted to live with (sixteen), I was closer to an adult than my sister (she is a much better cook, but no where near as mature as me). I've slipped a bit in terms of maturity, but I'm still more mature than my sister, to the extent that my English teacher (well, former, as I had to swap classes due to a new lesson being needed to be added) didn't even realise we were related until I told him about a month after school started up again.

This Troper lives off this trope. It doesn't help I'm younger than I look. I'm seventeen, and act as a therapist for...everyone. I'm the one who you can find writing pieces about morality deep into the night and the one you can come to for advice no matter what. God damn it.

Except for the insomnia and the fact that this started happening to me around the age of twelve, {{FilledeMarius would appear to be the female version of you.

My god, you're me three years older!

This troper has almost always been ahead of most other people in terms of intelligence. Back when I would chat frequently on Kongregate, I would express views and opinions mirroring people in their twenties when I was about 15 or 16. I've even been called world-weary thanks to my cynical realism.

Above troper. Recently finished reading Heart of Darkness for my English class and I was bored to death of the entire thing. Why? The book basically tells you most people are evil on the inside. Something I'd known sice I was about 12.

This troper has been described as "acting 50 years old" when he was in the 5th grade, and is currently described by his friends as "a grumpy old man in a younger man's body." It's a bit telling that, at about 12, I yelled at my neighbors to get off my lawn.

This troper is nearly identical to Tropers/WarriorOfLight's example above, except he hit that at 12.

This troper was said to be so, when younger. Now she is normal teen interested in normal teen problems. Also her grandmother, having two stupid younger brothers and busy father, she worked around farm in age of 12. But this times was like this.

I learned to read(halfway by myself, with some help from my dad) when I was 3, unlike my friends who didn't care for learning this until they had it in school. I also learned English fairly quickly(in a non-English speaking country), and could form mostly grammatically correct and correct spelled English sentences at the age of 10. Finally, I hated the kind of "blood-poop-sex-swearing" jokes some of my friends laughed at all the time, thinking it was nothing but immature and vulgar for no reason at all.

This troper doesn't really know if he's an example. He doesn't have much in terms of social skills, practically doesn't leave his house and no one is interested in him. He behaves as if he's younger than the rest of his friends. After all, they've had parties including copious amounts of alcohol since years ago, at least three - three years below the age at which that's legal. This troper is even a year younger than them. Yet we're in the same year at school, this troper got the highest score in a mock The Very Definitely Final Maths Exam, generally is one of the best in most subjects, actually somewhat enjoys reading and school, bothers to write properly... The best words for this are "Intelligent, not mature", or just BrilliantButLazy.

This tropette doesn't remember what her IQ is. Heck, sometimes she forgets when her birthday is... because she's too damn busy looking into the subtext of everything! She's depressed because she's a cynic ("why bother going to school when the job market is crashing? My college degree won't mean anything, I'll work a job that I most likely will hate, and I'm going to die without accomplishing anything useful for the public's benefit"). She also can't stand her younger brother, who isn't as intuitive as she is, and she may be a possible Aspie. She's also the most emotionally mature of her group, only choosing to display childish behaviors so her friends don't feel uncomfortable.

This 17 year old troper counts. He has understands philosophy, gives life advice to plenty of people, and is able to explain many abstract concepts that my smarter friends don't understand, combined with the fact that I'm regularly mistaken for a college student who is 20. Only my drivers permit proves my age.

This 14-year-old from Ohio has often felt that he's the Deconstruction of WiseBeyondTheirYears. Although he does have friends, he often feels that people disrespect him and treat him unfairly due to his intelgence (he just scored higher than 99% of the nation's somphmores - and is just a freshman) and his maturaity. Also, he feels that his mature state of mind does not help him understand people's humor, making him look distant and unemotional.

I was a late bloomer, I didn't start reading properly until seven. and I was also incredibly stupid (gullible) before an extremely harsh epipheny that got relatives at a chirstmas party saying I had gone from 12 to 30 (currently 16) when I started having strong, logical arguments conserning politics, abortion, war, general philosophy with relatives. I agree with someone a little above my post, being like this in highschool is annoying, surrounded by immature people and wishing they themselves would grow up. My solution is dumbing myself downto the point my friends think I'm insane.

I have always been more mature than the rest of my classmates (even older ones), friends or cousins; being able to fully understand the implications of death at age six, when my great grandmother died. I was also told to be wise by one of my best friends; some people ask me for advice even when I have no real experience in some areas. And teachers enjoy talking with me about the class, like Chemistry, Physics, Biology, etc.

This troper (17) often refers to herself as an old woman and often feels nostalgia for her grade school days. She's always gotten along with her teachers because she apreciates History and English and such. She's never gone through a teenage phase or wished she was in a different situation than the one she's in now. Her mother calls her an "old soul," because she's able to see from very different perspectives and has never been afraid to speak her somewhat unorthodox views. Part of all this is due to bookishness, since her parents started reading to her at an early age, but she likes to think there's more to it than that.

I am probably an example of this. I already pondered complicated philosophical and metaphysical questions when I was still a little girl, and generally tend to be more mature than my peers. However, the downsides to this trait are that it makes social interaction with my peers rather difficult and that people frequently accuse me of being a pretentious know-it-all.

I'm another example. My mom told me I started talking at 2 months, was speaking in full sentences at 5 months, taught myself how to read at age 2, and learned to write at age 3 from watching my older sister (who was 8 at the time). When I was 6, my first-grade teacher had my parents get some sort of testing done, and whoever it was that tested me (I still can't remember) said that I shouldn't have been in elementary school, I should have been working on a master's degree (though I think that was probably exaggeration to emphasise the point). My parents didn't have the money for homeschooling or private school, and they wanted me to be in public school so I could have something "normal" kids did, since outside of school I was never going to have a normal life. Around the same time I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, depression (yeah, they diagnose that in 6 year olds, apparently), an anxiety disorder and PTSD. I stayed in public school for a while, but was so ahead that the teachers just had me go to the library and study on my own. I was able to multiply and divide four-digit numbers in my head at age 7, and I learned Spanish and French just by listening to my mom speak by the time I was 10. At nine, my parents pulled me out of school for a few years, said they were "unschooling" me, and I pretty much just worked around the house and the farm, and studied in the loft above the barn with the cats. And to top it all off, I started college at 16, a whole year younger than when my dad started (I'm 17 now). Now, I'm starting to level out with other kids my age in terms of learning new things.

This 14 year-old troper has been called this by a few adults, even though in all fairness the 'knowledge' she had was fairly common for someone who spends more than half of their lives on the Internet to know.

This teenage troper gives her friends solutions for their problems even sometimes giving "psychological" answers or basically their own therapist, sometimes complains about life has the patience to actually sit through shows, music and films most teens won't give a heck about, and hates it wh3n p30pl3 type liek dis.