Ignorance 
I can see how this theory makes sense, though I’d like to toss up my head canon to see how it measures up.
We’ve seen dragons grow through indulging their greed. Greed is important to them, but does it necessarily need to be about material goods?
Explosive Greed Growth can happen if a dragon lets his desires go out of control. They become savage, brutal monsters only concerned with collecting shiny objects.
But a slower, more natural growth can occur if a dragon starts building a hoard out of things he truly wants and cares about. The more of those precious things he gathers, the bigger and stronger he gets in order to protect what actually matters.
For most of the teen dragons we see, they’re somewhere between these two extremes. They collect gems and such to fuel their growth, but they haven’t found the stuff that really means a lot to them just yet. The things they really want to protect that causes their bodies to get reach their full adult size so they can keep intruders from getting them. This is where Spike’s different.
Spike could still grow up from keeping a treasure hoard, but it’s one made up of his friends in Ponyville and all the memories he has with them. Each time he makes a new friend or they have an adventure together, he’s adding to his treasures. It may take a long time since he doesn’t seem to recognize this himself, but someday he’ll be a big, strong dragon, sharing those memories with new friends he makes across Equestria as a guardian of the legends of Twilight Sparkle and her friends.
Gotta admit, typing it out makes my theory seem a little shaky, but perhaps it’s a combination of both of ours? That dragons can age naturally but the more of a hoard they possess and truly want to protect the bigger and stronger they get as they get older?
I dunno. What do the rest of you think?
We’ve seen dragons grow through indulging their greed. Greed is important to them, but does it necessarily need to be about material goods?
Explosive Greed Growth can happen if a dragon lets his desires go out of control. They become savage, brutal monsters only concerned with collecting shiny objects.
But a slower, more natural growth can occur if a dragon starts building a hoard out of things he truly wants and cares about. The more of those precious things he gathers, the bigger and stronger he gets in order to protect what actually matters.
For most of the teen dragons we see, they’re somewhere between these two extremes. They collect gems and such to fuel their growth, but they haven’t found the stuff that really means a lot to them just yet. The things they really want to protect that causes their bodies to get reach their full adult size so they can keep intruders from getting them. This is where Spike’s different.
Spike could still grow up from keeping a treasure hoard, but it’s one made up of his friends in Ponyville and all the memories he has with them. Each time he makes a new friend or they have an adventure together, he’s adding to his treasures. It may take a long time since he doesn’t seem to recognize this himself, but someday he’ll be a big, strong dragon, sharing those memories with new friends he makes across Equestria as a guardian of the legends of Twilight Sparkle and her friends.
Gotta admit, typing it out makes my theory seem a little shaky, but perhaps it’s a combination of both of ours? That dragons can age naturally but the more of a hoard they possess and truly want to protect the bigger and stronger they get as they get older?
I dunno. What do the rest of you think?
