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You know, now that you mention it...
The girls at my elementary school had crushes, but definitely not on adults. Teenagers were the oldest they had crushes on. The boys were the same.
Adults just seem so old at that age, so Jimmy's mom, Beautiful Gorgeous, and Princess Quin Shi "Peggy" Sue should've just seemed old to them, not hot.
I mean, they are attractive, to adults. And teenagers. Prepubescent children, not so much.
And, while I'm sure 11-year-olds were allowed some freedom, "One of Us" has Cindy returning from a competition out of town, and she exits the bus alone. That's an amount of freedom Cindy wouldn't have been allowed for legal reasons.
Not to mention, "Men at Work" has them getting jobs, despite being 10 at that point. Again, legally, this would not have been allowed.
It's a cartoon, not everything has to be accurate, I know. I'm not asking for accuracy, I'm asking for shows about children to remember that the main characters are children.
The show had some great plots that make sense for 11-year-olds:
Jimmy's upset at being the shortest in class
Jimmy's upset over not being athletic
School science fair
Candy-selling competition
Trying to make the perfect candy
Sheen's afraid of being held back (again!)
Jimmy doesn't want to pick up his clothes
Sheen's action figure goes missing
And more
But as the show went on, the romance aspect got emphasized a lot more. Of course, by that time, most of us were invested in the main ships, but looking back, it seems weird how much romance they put in the show.
I don't hate romance, but it feels weird to make it a central plot element in a show about elementary school-aged children. Especially when some of those romantic feelings are directed at adults.
Not to mention having it be such a flip-flop, back and forth, will they won't they thing.
The show would have been fine if the romance aspect wasn't so heavily emphasized at the end. Even though we liked the main ships, they weren't why we watched the show.
Well, time for another opinion! This one's about an older Nickelodeon show, Jimmy Neutron! It's very simple: the show would've made way more sense if the characters were teenagers instead of 11-year-olds. Things like:
Jimmy being allowed to fly around the world in a homemade rocket
Jimmy being allowed to fly into space
Jimmy being allowed to work in his lab unsupervised
Pretty much anything Jimmy does
The kids routinely go places like amusement parks or Cafés by themselves
The boys developing crushes at the drop of a hat
Cindy & Jimmy flip-flopping back & forth on their feelings for each other
Carl's crush on Jimmy's mom (still creepy, but makes more sense if he's a hormonal teenager)
The boys' brief crushes on Beautiful Gorgeous
These are all things that would make sense if the characters were teenagers. 11-year-olds just don't act like this. Trust me, I was 11 when the show was airing. I was in that age group, no one at my school acted like that. Crushes were only on classmates or teenage celebrities, we weren't allowed to go out by ourselves, and we would've needed supervision just to cook, nevermind the kind of science Jimmy was doing.
This level of drama, romance, and personal freedom, would make more sense for teenagers than children. Shows about kids can be fun, but you need to remember to have them act like kids.