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I've been lucky enough to experiment with a few different age groups. I mainly perform for adults (generally just with friends or small groups) but I have also occasionally performed for children. And the children are far more terrifying. Although they are more easily entertained, I also find them harder to fool. Maybe it's my technique but they do seem to be far more suspicious and less likely to fall for misdirection.

So, entertainers out there, what do you think? Do you find children to be a harder group to fool? Why do you think that is? What has your toughest audience been?

Depends how old the children are.

I work with children age 2-4 years old, they don't understand most magic and to a child putting bread in a thing and it coming out as toast is magic in itself.

But some things they do like, I found a simple chop cup routine (using their little plastic tea cup, and plastic fruit from their toy fruit stall) they loved. The objects where very familiar to them so when they do something magic like make fruit appear from nowhere they where very happy.

On the subject of misdirection the young children are easiest of all to misdirect, because you simply point and tell them where you want them to look and they do. There is no thought of you trying to trick them, they don't have any thought on trying to catch you out, they're just happy you're showing them something strange

Try doing magic for OAPs with dementia. That's...... interesting.......

Or the 10-14 year olds!!!!

Many years ago, while my daughter was around 2, we were approached by a table magician in a restaurant. I told him she was too young to be familiar with the laws of physics, let alone understand how they could be broken.

Having said that, I've successfully used a few classics on very young children - egg bag, sympathetic coins (on the carpet), simple cups and balls.

Barry