Paige Swanson is a recurring character on Young Sheldon. She's first introduced in Season 2 as a student in Dr. John Sturgis 's class who is another 10 year old genius. She later appears at a lecture at a museum and dares Sheldon Cooper to sneak out and climb into a closed exhibit. She has a rival-friends relationship with Sheldon throughout the series.
She is smarter than him, causing him to be jealous, especially when Dr. Sturgis praises her too much in front of Sheldon. Mary invites Paige and her family over for a play date, much to Sheldon's chagrin. Paige reappears in " Carbon Dating and a Stuffed Raccoon " when she goes to attend a lecture on carbon dating at a museum, which Sheldon is also attending. A little into the lecture, they both become bored by it and wander into a closed area of the museum. In there, Paige tells Sheldon about her parents probably getting a divorce because them fighting all the time.
They are then caught by a security guard who then calls in the children's fathers, followed by Paige's mother. Missy and Paige go off to the Hello Kitty store at Medford's shopping mall where it is revealed that they had a good conversation together. Missy and Paige have a sleepover. During the stay, they play with Missy's dolls, tie Georgie's ankles to his bed so he'd trip and fall which he eventually does the next morning and Paige tells Missy an imagined scary story to which Sheldon is a pompous, little brute about due to his lack of imagination, which is less true.
In " Body Glitter and a Mall Safety Kit ", Paige's parents, Barry and Linda, have gotten a divorce and it has negatively affected her appearance she no longer wears dresses, but now wears denim outfits, has changed her hairstyle and has dyed a pink streak in her hair and her attitude she has become snarky, mouthy and rebellious, has turned to shoplifting and has grown indifferent to her schoolwork, resulting in her grades falling , so she goes to spend the weekend with the Coopers.
Her devastation over her parents' divorce results in Sheldon learning to listen and he soon offers to make the distraught Paige a hot beverage, which he does when he heads to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea. After refusing to engage with Sheldon in competition after repeated attempts by Sheldon both to compete and to force her to do so, she punches Sheldon after he talks about her belief about her parents' divorce. He agrees to do so, however, he secretly plans to sell it as an inferior school.
