In her book on Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", Beth Savickey points out that few critics pay explicit attention to Wittgenstein's references to the child and childhood, particularly in his later work. She argues (paraphrasing Wittgenstein) that "the figure of the child is the figure that draws together the concepts of teaching and meaning, or learning and language". Leaving aside here the difficulty of what it might mean for Savickey to make claims about Wittgenstein's observing "how children actually learn and use language" while at the same time asserting that the child in his work is "a figure", who "could ... be imagined otherwise", Savickey does raise the question of the child in the "Philosophical Investigations" without actually taking further the issue of the "figurality" she points towards. The question in the "Philosophical Investigations" is not of explaining a language game by means of the child's experiences, but of noting a language game [the "child"]. In this article, the author argues that there are far-reaching and problematical overall philosophical consequences of (overt or inadvertent) retentions of an essentialist reading of the child, even, or especially, when these retentions occur in analyses which characterise themselves otherwise as "postmodern". (Contains 20 notes.)