Steven Universe is not a normal 14-year old, and the fact that he’s a half-alien hybrid of ambiguous bodily composition is only half the reason. Steven is smol. Real smol. So smol that when I found out he was 12 at the start of the series my jaw hit the fucking ground because I wasn’t aware he’d hit 10 yet.

It’s not just his body that looks young. Steven’s mind, his emotions and his personality are basically somewhere between the ages of 7 and 9, bottoming out a good half of his actual age. This isn’t normal, and I think the gems are to blame

Canonically, Stevem grew at a normal rate until around the age of 8, at which point his physical and mental development more or less locked down. Since Steven’s body is directly tied to his emotional perception of age, we can’t exactly blame poor nutrition or an overdue growth spurt. No, Steven’s state is a direct result of the status of his uprbinging. and what a coincidence that Steven stopped aging right around the time he moved in with the crystal gems

As the crew constantly reminds us, the gem race as a whole do not age. They are born fully formed from the ground and are supposed to remain at the same mental and emotional age for their entire existence. The only other gem who appeared to have any sort of childhood was Amethyst, and how much of that was Steven’s imagination is a lot more ambiguous than the fandom has accepted (Remember the time he pictured an old englishman as Jamie the mailman?)

Put simply, the crystal gems don’t expect him to grow up or continually raise their expectations of his emotional maturity. They shelter him from danger, their history and his mother’s war crimes. They may allow him on missions, but they still treat him like a child, and that’s not even the start

Unlike every other little boy in america who wasn’t raised by christian fundamentalists, Steven doesn’t go to school, and given that he only first learned what school was in season 1, I think it’s safe to say he hasn’t attended.

In the absence of an evolving frame of reference, Steven fails to evolve with it. As a result, while all the other kids are in school socializing, playing and growing with their peers, Steven interacts with people much older than him who can only treat him as a child.

Without peers his own emotional age Steven isn’t going to grow emotionally or physically. He’s a little boy and it’s all because the gems coddle him!