386 | Adulthood Bias and Piaget: Why Adults Misunderstand Children

Play Therapy Podcast: A Master-Class in Child-Centered Play Therapy · Mar 31, 2026 · 14m

In this episode, I revisit the concept of Adulthood Bias and explain why it continues to show up so frequently in how adults interact with children. At its core, Adulthood Bias is the tendency to forget what it's like to be a child—emotional, present-focused, and without the capacity for abstract reasoning—and instead expect children to think and respond like adults. I connect this idea back to Piaget's developmental stages to show that this isn't just a perspective shift—it's grounded in what we know about how children actually develop.

I also walk through how Adulthood Bias plays out in…