Genie is called the wild child because she was unable to advance through development like normal children. She was abused by her parents and locked up in a room where she was never spoken to and unable to play. She didn’t develop the ability to speak and acted as though she was quite younger than she truly was. What’s important about her is that psychologists took advantage of her situation to study whether older children would be able to learn language and how to speak past the crucial period (very early childhood - infancy). She never fully developed because she only began to receive normal social stimulus when she was an older child. She was never able to live on her own because she never developed into a fully functioning adult. Her development was halted by the abuse she suffered as a young child.
