People dying is bad, and Kiribel should not have to go extra years without hugs. But there is a definite trend, in Emily's world, that telepaths who come into their powers earlier than later tend to do better. It is, perhaps, not a statistically significant trend--telepaths are a thing that happens, unlike, say, eye beams, but they're not actually common relative to the baseline population--but younger minds definitely seem better able to handle oh hey I can viscerally perceive that other minds exist.