Up Front: Oh, Grow Up
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There was a point where my son was about 3 when he suddenly realised that one day he would die - he suffered an obvious existential crisis and got really really worried, which was eventually solved a few days later by talking through "it's going to be a very long time from now".
The mortality thing is probably more a "I'm going to die soonish" for some more or less worrying value of soonish
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Hebe,
".... a pit of their own filth when we leave them on their own for three weeks."
From where I'm sitting, with two 15-year-old males (Boys? Nah. Teens? Vaguely patronising and with bad connotations) at home, that goal seems very, very, very far off. They cook very well, play music, write songs, chop wood, speak multiple languages, write books, surf and are emotionally literate, but man are they filthy. So much so that we have negotiated one day a week when they don't HAVE to shower: "filthy Friday", a treasured ritual for the pair. God knows why, but then I have never been a boy.
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Hebe, in reply to
Can you believe that these days I get the mortality thing and the "not really a grown-up" thing? Am I weird?
Same. Pimples and wrinkles, without a gap between.
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suddenly realised that I wasn’t the only person who felt like they were faking being a grown-up, and at some point I was going to get called out on it
That realisation took place around the time that my fear of flying became kinda crippling. Because if *everyone* is faking it, then the fucking pilot is faking it and therefore WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. (I'm not saying this is logical. It's just how my mind works.)
we have negotiated one day a week when they don’t HAVE to shower
Oh god. I can't handle the intermittent bathing thing AT ALL. Skipping a day is the *worst*. I know a lot of people do it but... I find it gross.
(I have just realised that this post makes me sound like the most neurotic person on earth. Oh well.)
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Inside every pensioner, there is a teenager asking what the fuck just happened?
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Josh Addison, in reply to
Because if *everyone* is faking it...
Everyone feels like they're faking it, but I think in reality, most of us are perfectly capable and competent at what we do. At 37, I've managed to train myself to ignore that sinking "oh shit, I'm out of my depth" feeling when I recognise it, by reminding myself of all the previous times I've felt it, and how it turned out I was able to cope just fine. I still get it, I just know it's not worth listening to.
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Adulthood, as far as I'm concerned, is realising that the buck for your life stops with you. All those skills like cooking and driving are just various reflections of the willingness to take responsibility for yourself, to whatever extent you're capable of it. I'm at an age where a lot of people are transitioning between acting like adults and not doing so, and the ones who don't seem like adults are the ones who still expect their parents or other people to take care of things for them, or just break down in the face of difficulty.
The problem is that doing it and getting other people to recognise you've done it are always the same thing. I've noticed this very much in the US, where moving halfway around the world to undertake postgraduate studies doesn't get you much in the adulthood stakes, despite the attendant difficulties, but being married, which is comparatively falling-off-a-log like, is an automatic passport to the status - at least in some people's eyes.
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Hebe, in reply to
I can't handle the intermittent bathing thing AT ALL. Skipping a day is the *worst*.
Fifty shades of grey has an entirely different meaning in this house.
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OMG, I'm not the only one! I'm having my second 21st birthday next year and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up... In five or ten years, the kids will be moving out, and then what? Time for an OE perhaps...
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Gregor Ronald, in reply to
Yep, Angus, you're right. I'm 65 next birthday, but my brain still thinks I'm 25-30. Shame about the body...
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Shame about the body…
bloody knees
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
the most neurotic person
nope, not at all.
And the not bathing thing????? In summer two showers a day is required ... if ladies glow and horses sweat, buggered if I know what my sweat glands think they're up to!
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Lilith __, in reply to
Oh Hebe, Filthy Friday, how hilarious!
I feel a lot more like a grownup now I realise everybody’s just doing the best they can, which is often not that great. And we’re all one mis-judgement away from epic fail.
As a teen I used to think adults must be all so competent and not just making it up as they went along. Now I know better, lol.
I remember a 50ish man telling me, when I was in my teens, that he still didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. I thought he was kidding.
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Hebe, in reply to
And the not bathing thing????? In summer two showers a day is required
I guess it helps if one lives in a relatively dry climate like Canterbury ... one negotiated shower-less day out of seven days makes the other six days easier to manage -- sometimes it becomes Stinky Saturday or Sunday if out-in-the-world forays are required on Friday. I must stress that this only applies to the boys, not the adults in the house!
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What is most challenging for parents (I reckon) is when your children know more than you do about certain things, when expectations are that parents are The Font Of All Knowledge. My daughter (18) is fluent in Japanese and my son (26) knows more than I will ever know about graphic novels and has read Proust and Joyce, Humbling, really.
I think you really appreciate your offspring as adults if you are an older adult yourself.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
What is most challenging for parents (I reckon) is when your children know more than you do about certain things, w
I find that awesome rather than challenging. I have long ago ceded authority in new Zealand history, bird identification and knowledge of the subtleties of test cricket to my lad (13).
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Geoff Lealand, in reply to
You realise we are officially in a situation of drought??
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Thank you. I’m sorry, I chickened out. Also, I need help.
Awesome, now I'm an adult.
/blink.
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Danielle, in reply to
I guess it helps if one lives in a relatively dry climate like Canterbury …
I am less concerned about sweat and more concerned about the residue of... other things. Gah.
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Damian Christie, in reply to
I see Damian has helpfully defined what a young person is in his blog post.
Well, yes. Sort of. Having just this week had the last birthday I'll have before I turn 40, I'm grappling with the same issues as everyone else - a refusal to admit I'm a grown up, it would seem. All the while paying a mortgage, raising a child, managing people and all those other grown-up things. But dammit I still wear sneakers!
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Emma Hart, in reply to
when expectations are that parents are The Font Of All Knowledge
I reckon one of the few things I've got right as a parent is frequent use of the phrase, "I don't know. Let's find out!" So yeah, now my kids think google is the font of all knowledge.
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Damian Christie, in reply to
I want to be able to say to her, “It’s never going to be that hard again. Adults don’t behave like that.”
Sure, they do, but you're generally not forced to share a small room with the ones who do, for hours at a time, day in, day out, without legal recourse. If you are being forced to do that, congratulations, you're in prison.
School is cruel punishment if you're unusual.
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This
An adult should be able to say “Thank you,” “I’m sorry, I fucked up,” and “I need help.”
And this:
I want my kids to be kind in their dealings with others, but also to be able to stand up for themselves.
Everything else is just details.
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This question is kind of huge for me at the moment, having begun my second undergraduate degree at the age of 41. Nearly everyone else is a pimply teenager. It's quite a strange feeling to have the same mental age as them, as pertains to the subjects we're studying, but 20-odd years more life-experience. In some ways that experience feels all unreal.
Curiously, despite being assured that I look my age, or perhaps a little older, by most people around my age (the people who should know), I'm now routinely being mistaken for a 20-something by other students. The context is clearly so odd, and I wear the student mantle so easily, that they just can't see the obvious.
I don't actually have an opinion on what it is to be an adult. Is it something like being an employee? Seems to make the same demands on behavior. And it seems we live for the moments when we don't have to be adults. In other words, being an adult is work, and if you do it all the time, you're like one of those people who never leaves the office.
This possibly explains why bosses are often childish. It's one of the big perks. You get to make the adults run around doing shit for you, and to have tantrums if they don't. When was the last time life was like that?
I tend to think I'm an adult, but then I get a memory hole at a party, and can only presume I was not acting responsibly at all. As a teenager this would not have alarmed me, so perhaps there's some kind of adulthood now.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Everything else is just details.
Yup. Can anyone else pick the origin of this philosophical phrase?
"Be good, be kind, in whatever you say and do, and keep cool until after school".
Words to live by.
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