Psychic Children

Similar to Child Mage, where children are often adept in magic, kids often have telepathy, psychokinesis, and can see the paranormal. More often than not, girl psychics are used more than boys. This could be for different reasons.

One is that is that it's often considered that children are more sensitive to emotions than adults. Also, girls are probably used more because of the stereotype that they are more emotionally connected than boys.

It may also stem from children might know more than we think, so it sometimes causes Creepy Child and Wise Beyond Their Years characters to have that ability. Psychic powers tend to cause Power Incontinence and emotion related problems since it's one of the powers that are used that they can't control sometimes. This can lead them to be dangerous and may cause everything that's bothering them to be destroyed when they can't keep their emotions in check, making their psychic abilities Psychoactive Powers. Also, they tend to have low life spans and are often fragile. As losing control of their powers may cause them to permanently damage themselves or kill them.

Along with psychic powers, these children might also be able to communicate and see ghost, spirits, poltergeist, and the other paranormal. Because of this, they are often used in teams, to find where they are, eliminate them, or find the cause of suffering for the vengeful ones.

These kids also often used for secret organizations, government agencies, and other groups because of their powers. They can also might be twins and have Twin Telepathy, along with being Creepy Twins.

In RPGs expect them to take on the role as a Mystical Waif or Waif Prophet.

Related to Child Mage, but instead of having powerful psychic abilities, they are good at magic. Also related to Waif Prophet as they are often frail and act as messengers.

Examples of Psychic Children include:

Anime And Manga

• Pokémon Special: Yellow, who can read the minds of Pokemon and has limited telekinesis. She is the youngest of the first-generation protagonists.
• Nearly ever esper encountered in A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun is a teenager or younger. This is perhaps justified by natural-born espers being rare, and all the children in Academy City are students taking part in an esper development program.
• The main characters of the anime Night Head Genesis are all young teens, being students of a boarding school designed to contain their kind.
• Many of the espers in Zettai Karen Children are children, but especially the core Power Trio.
• Mai, the Psychic Girl. Mai Kuju is a 14-year-old girl with powerful psychic abilities. The Wisdom Alliance is a secret organization that wants to control the world. They already control four other psychic children and want to add Mai to their collection.
• Sabrina in the Pokémon anime was this trope for a while. The anime showed her developing her powers very young, around five or six years old. There's quite a creepy subplot involving her her dolls and toys...
• Feature prominently in Akira, including the title character.
• Also by Katsuhiro Otomo, Etsuko from Domu: A Child's Dream, who may or may not be related to the above.
• Pretty much every Gundam universe, with the exceptions of G Gundam, Gundam Wing and Turn a Gundam prominently feature many youngsters with psychic powers of one kind or another, most of whom end up getting turned into as Child Soldiers because of them.

Comic Books

• In the Marvel Universe:
  • Jean Grey's mutant psionic abilities first manifested when she was a child.
  • The Stepford Cuckoos were an attempt by a Mad Scientist (and is there any other kind?) to breed an army of creepy psychic children.
• Liana from A Distant Soil falls under this trope. Though all Ovanans(and half-Ovanans like her and Jason) have psychic powers, she's an avatar and Jason is a disruptor, our two MOST powerful powers. Seren, the current avatar, is not a child, but is certainly very childlike.

Film

• In the film Minority Report, three psychic children are 'harnessed' to foresee and prevent crimes; chief among the kids is a girl who saw through a specific deception (and instrumental in the plot)
• Constantine. The title character and Isabel and Angela Dodson all first displayed their psychic abilities as children. Unfortunately, these abilities helped them to see the half-demons infesting the Earth, resulting in two of them being forced to undergo psychiatric treatment and later committing suicide.

Literature

• Danny Torrance from The Shining has some very strong psychic abilities, at least by the standards of his universe.
• Anthony from Jerome Bixby's short story It's a Good Life is only three years old and has complete control of everything.
• In the Maximum Ride series, the youngest member of the group (Angel, at only six) can read minds, often by accident. Later, she also gains the abilities of breathing underwater and mind control.
• The Midwich Cuckoos which was later filmed (more than once) as Village of the Damned had the psychic creepy faux affably evil children as the whole point of its plot.

Live Action TV

• Olivia Dunham from Fringe was this as a child, although only after being treated with a pharmaceutical called Cortexiphane.

Tabletop RPG

• Champions. The villain organization PSI (Parapsychologial Studies Institute) kidnapped children with psychic powers and brainwashed them into loyal minions.

Video Game

• Pokémon only plays this straight with Mossdeep Gym Leaders Tate and Liza, who look like young children (complete with Twin Telepathy). And maybe Caitlin, depending on which generation you're playing. All the other prominent Psychic-type trainers (eg. Sabrina, Will, Lucian, as well as the Psychic trainer class) are at least in their twenties.
  • Some Psychic-type Pokemon, such as Mime Jr, Smoochum, Ralts, Kirlia, Gothita, and Gothorita actually resemble children.
• In the MOTHER trilogy, the protagonists Ninten,Ness and Lucas along with some of the other main characters are all Kid Heros with psychic powers called PK or PSI in their universe.
• Psychonauts is set in a summer camp full of these.

Western Animation

• Justice League Unlimited has a young girl named Ace who is a crazy-powerful telepath and psychic. Eventually, though, since her powers are artificial, she dies from them.