Mentally another age

Post Reply New Topic

Do you think it's actually possible to say someone is mentally another age? I think it's a bunch of BS most of the time. They use it as an excuse to take away people's rights.

I'm not sure. I took it as something which is only a possible way of describing someone if their behaviour and sometimes abilities don't fit with what is considered 'the norm' for their age group, which assumes that there is 'a norm' to fit in with, or not fit in with. Literally, someone's age is the length of time they have been alive for, regardless of anything else, so technically having a different mental age doesn't exist, it's just maybe thought of as being the most effective analogy to use to explain why someone appears different mentally than is considered typical for someone of their age, because others think they happen to resemble people of a different age more often than people of the same age?
That might be wrong or not make sense, and it's not my opinion on whether it's a good idea or not, just what I thought some people might mean by it.

I think that may be cause because of a lack of social skills. our social skill develop at a slower rate(if any) then NT do, and NT see this as acting a younger age then we actually are.

I'm not sure really because I don't know anyone else who is my age to compare myself to.

In my case, I struggle to manage to live my life the way that I believe is probably expected of someone of my age.

But then I don't know whether that's the same for most people.

Wikipedia's definition (which you probably all know): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_age

A paper written in 1926: http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Thurst ... _1926.html

Another definition: http://www.psychologyconcepts.com/mental-age/

And: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/43476_th ... mental-age

In most cases, it specifically discusses "intelligence" (academic-type) as determined by some (often arbitrary) set of criteria. The way it is used "commonly" seems to imply something else altogether, like some equally-arbitrary standard of "maturity."

Labels, labels, and more labels....

I don't like it. An adult with an intellectual disability is not the same person as a twelve-year-old without one, and you can't treat them like twelve-year-olds. Or five-year-olds, or three-year-olds, or whatever "mental age" they've been labeled with.

I've been following the story of Christina Sankey--she's an autistic woman who died in Philadelphia some time after she was separated from her caregiver--and they keep on saying she had "the mind of a toddler". But when I read stories about her, I don't see a toddler. I see an adult. Intellectually disabled, but an adult. For example, she liked coffee, just like I do. And one of the two times someone saw her, she was sitting on a curb and petting a cat, the way any cat-loving adult might do if a cat greeted them, not the way a toddler might grab at the cat and scream "Kitty!" or something like that. I suppose she was probably diagnosed with severe/profound intellectual disability... But she wasn't a toddler. She was a grown woman.

I have this issue where I am an adult person in my forties but I do have a lot of situations where my emotional or even every now and them my mental capacity is that of a young teen of a small child. It's an interesting phenomenon so I can at any given moment be quite have quite a variety of age ranges in which I respond or see or understand a situation. So I won't go so far as to dismiss that statement but I do see what you mean Callista. I think that it is a combination of both sometimes. That is how it can be for me.

Well, on specific skills, I guess you could match me up with the ability level of an average n-year-old, sure; but that's not the same thing as saying that I have a mental age of n.

Like... say I broke my leg, and I had to go around on crutches. Now my ability to walk is about the same as a two-year-old's. But that doesn't mean I'm physically two years old; I'm taller, I know more about walking, my bones respond to injury differently from a baby's fast-growing bones, and I've had the time to learn how to drive, whereas a two-year-old hasn't. It's kind of like that.

Perhaps people like to use mental age because they like to simplify things, to pretend away the differences, because that is less threatening to them. They know how to deal with children. They see themselves as having social power over children. If some people had to see an intellectually/developmentally disabled adult as an equal, while still acknowledging that that person is different from themselves, that would be very threatening to them. They like to put us in boxes and try to make us stay there, because in a very real way they are scared of us--because our very existence means that they do not know as much about people as they think they do.

Callista, I understand what you mean about the specific skills and that makes sense because there are often many times that I can even be "older" than my age when it comes to certain topics or understanding certain kinds of things. So That is probably a much better way to define it.

As far as me, I know for a fact that no one has put me in that box. I often have to explain to people that I am this way and I have even had people who did not know me intimately argue about me being this way telling me I was not. But I had always kept that hidden from them. Some people notice it and it confuses them. I had learned to hide my childlike traits and it is only within the past couple of years that I have been secure enough in who I am as a person to allow more people to see them and know about them. Usually I would retreat and stay more secluded whenever I was in "child mode". Certain things in child mode are impossible to hide though but except for my husband who can see them very clearly, I never had many relations that were close and intimate so only a couple of people ever knew this about me. But I can also see your point about how it can used as a method to control people.

It's always bothered me that age and ability are so tightly locked together in people's minds....as if age itself magically creates or prevents abilities.

In a lot of ways, I feel quite immature for my age, and in a lot of other ways, I feel like a jaded old man. I once had someone tell me that he thought I was an "old soul", and I agreed with him. On some days I feel like I was born in completely the wrong decade, and on other days, I realize that I was born at just the right time. I would have loved to have been a mopey 80s/90s teen, but at the same time, I sure as hell wouldn't have had access to YouTube or Wikipedia, which are two things I simply would not be able to function without.

I believe that it is possible to calculate a person's mental age. It is all based on the results of intelligence tests given to tens of thousands of people and then averaged together. With that being said, just because I think it is theoretically possible to calculate a person's mental age. I do not think that the estimates we have today are completely accurate. They are tied to the specific cultures in which the tests are developed, administered, and scored. Human development is shaped so much by culture that I find it hard to generalize. What a child in rural Idaho can do versus what I child in an traditional culture in rural Kenya can do are two totally separate things because the social expectations and life experiences are so different. On a certain level, don't we all try to calculate a person's mental age if the person acts abnormal? I know I do. If an adult throws a tantrum, I describe the person's behavior as that of a toddler and say that emotionally that person is still a child. It certainly isn't precise but it is useful when describing a person's behavior, I think.

I don't try to calculate a person's mental age.