Immaturity

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Oh yeah, I know what that's like! When I was a kid (and a teenager) I liked to hang out with younger kids (and also much younger kids), too....I mean, they were cute, they liked me, and they were a lot of fun. I enjoyed my time with them because they were happy to take the lead in everything and didn't make as many social demands on me as my same-age peers and adults did, and I'm sure they liked having a "big person" who was interested in what they were doing and wanted to spend time with them and wasn't "busy".

Oh yeah i'm still really immature and if it weren't for my room mate making me do 'grown up' stuff I would just sit at home and play video games. I find it much easier to talk to younger people rather than adults. I never feel like I know what to say to them!

I never have felt like a typical "Manly Man". You know, kinda the-- hang out with the guys and watch football or the Burly construction-worker or firefighter type that bellows orders and "Takes Charge" of a big project. I have always been a "Techno-Geek". Fairly sensitive and non-confrontational. I don't know if that is a lack of maturity though. I would be responsible for a child or spouse and do everything I could to make sure they were taken care of. I do feel like a kid sometimes. I just don't want to behave in a immature way at the wrong moment when someone is counting on me.

I like this!

I always felt that I will catch up when it comes to these so called social disparities, but now it feels like I will never get there. I have had plenty of time.

I'm 32 and I feel like my body has aged but I'm not fundamentally much different than I was at 18. As a child I thought maybe I would eventually reach an age where I no longer found must "adult stuff" torturously boring. It never happened. It seems the older I get the more isolating and depressing life becomes.

I always felt younger than my peers growing up. Then at times I felt more mature than my peers because I did my school work, didn't skip school, I didn't do drugs or alcohol. I stayed out of trouble and didn't goof off in class. Now I feel neutral. But when I am around teens such as my niece and her friends, I feel I am at their level.

Probably doesn't help that life really is isolating and depressing lol (given how people fight constantly about the dumbest crap, only allows for "normal" to be acceptable in main society and anything else is shunned, etc.)

I am 43, but I have no idea what that should feel like. To me, I am much the same as I was at 33 or 23, although not much the same as I was at 13.

I do not think that my maturity matches my chronological age, but it doesn't particularly bother me.

I'd consider myself on the mature side, but I can be a little weird and quirky in a teenager way.

I'm nineteen but I notice I might be going through the rebellious phase that most NTs go through between the ages of 15 and 16.

I guess I'm a few years behind but I do notice myself going through similar stages to Nts I just experience them later.

I'm 34 and still feel like a kid. For a long time I seemed more mature because I saw my true interests as "off limits," so I just ignored them. It was like being nobody at all I just lived to do things for other people.

But now I try not to care what people think of me, if toys and cartoons make me happy then that is what I'm interested in.

I have some immature traits, such as still liking anime (only Studio Ghibli anime) at 32. I also communicate through my soft toy Totoros with people I trust.

The world gives me precisely zero incentive to act like a 'grown up adult' and it's such a false act anyway when they all still act like they're in the playground most of the time

I'm intellectually and morally about 1000 times more mature than most people but come across as childlike but the people judging don't matter so who cares?

What's so terrible about children anyway? They aren't usually corrupted like the adults are so are generally nicer humans. Adulthood usually entails learning how to be adept at lying, cheating and using and abusing people - not something I want to aspire to.

It's taken me a lot longer to grow up and understand how the world works.

In some ways, I feel far, far older than my chronological age, because of a very rough passage in early life. In other ways I have lacked most normal experience, so can be naive.

But basically I'm more or less caught up-ish now. However I undulate between very adult, wise, down to earth, grown up etc., to emotionally younger and sometimes silly.
Because of speech and communication problems due to autism, sometimes I speak like a child without meaning to, and can attract bullying or teasing because of it.
I don't process what's going on as quickly as an NT, and despite being of high intelligence, I come out with dumb statements like ''Why?'' in a high pitched voice in response to obvious questions.

I hate that.

Don't generalise...Children being pure and angelic? Are you kidding (sorry for the pun) but children can be as cruel and bullying as adults, adults have just learned to do it ia more cruel, behind the back, way of psychologically. i was so often bullied because I had a broken nose, and such. Enough study has been done on children and if you want to read one good book of what childen are capable off, then read Willima Golding's The lord of the flies. And freud called them polymorphic perverze creatures.

Having said that, I am so happy to read this topic. I have theorised so much about it as to why I could only glue with children and they with me. I remember at age 26 being invited by an 11 year old friend to come an play at the playground and have fun on the tobogan. later he said to me: don't you think it is fun to be a child again? If I close my eyes and I hear you talk, I would think you are only12. That stuck in my head for the rest of my life. But I ma 53 and I still feel 12 or 17, depends on the situation...and I seem to forget all the time that I have a 53 year old body (well preserved though and looking maybe 48) and when I talk to children people find it suspicious and I get agressive or hostile reactions. I am a magnet for childen, my fried who is a retired special needs teacher. She cannot comprehend what it is that draws them to me...but she keeps stressing that I cannot be like that, that I am not 12 anymore and that i don't look it either, and that people find it very strange that an adult of my age can get caught up in conversations with children. I am back on my won, travelling and working abroad...I had travelled for one year with her, but I need my space and she lovers to talk and talk, and I couldn't stand it anymore...Now I am alone, in a guesthouse, I see so many travellers and ususally I get only on well with 18 year old travellers...I get bored so quickly with my peers and there anren't many backpackers of my 53 around to converse with..I feel I can't have people around me for a while...even with 18 year old travellers I feel I am young and forget they could be my children and when I realise they could be I get instantly depressed and feel old...so I have quite contradictory feelings about it. but at school at age 16 I giggled for no reason and was considered immature an laughed at and bullied for that reason...no friends or thos who wanted to be seen with me. In point of fact I struggled to remain young in the mirror. I remember asking my sister how I should comb my hair (at 17) that if I comed it with a sideline I would look 15 again. I shaved my hair on my legs at age 14, which drove my father to say taht boys didn't do that...anyway, you see this becomes a long rant...

I have also questioned things, too many for peers and family, but some said i was quite intelligente making such questions. I have an annoying habit when I ask questions about the plot in a film or about the characters throughout the movie...and I still do it today, and I only know now why, but some told me in my face at age 40 that i sounded like a child and laughed at it. I felt so humiliated by this 23 year old NT who had put me up in his house. You see he was a young traveller I met in Indi, he was Dutch, so later I stayed a few weeks in his flat. But then he realised how mmature I was and I lost face.

How many times in my lief I have been asked: when will you grow up. And I echo this now to my daughter who acts as immaturely at age 22 as I did when I was 18... Teenager forever in an aging body...that drives me to suicide thoughts sometimes.