When/Why did your parents start treating you like an adult?

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Cricket2731
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10 Mar 2010, 1:33 pm

My father started treating me like an adult when I was 12. My mother started her teaching career when I was 7. Most of the time, she taught 2nd grade. To this day (it's been 47 years, & I'm now 54), she treats me like a 2nd-grader. As a result, I do my best to limit communication with her to letters & greeting cards; I got tired of her ill-treatment over the phone that invariably resulted in me hanging up in the middle of one of her tirades.



druidsbird
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10 Mar 2010, 4:15 pm

I'm 29, and they don't treat me like an adult. And that's ok, because, well, I'm as childish as I am intelligent. I don't do pragmatic.


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Joe90
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07 Aug 2010, 10:50 am

My whole family treated me like an adult since about the age of 14, but now 14 year olds are allowed to be kids



Amik
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08 Aug 2010, 3:46 pm

My parents treated my like an adult with certain things early and like a child with certain other things for very long.

I was a young teenager when my parents started trusting me pretty much like an adult with most day to day responsibilities and events. They kept treating me like a child when it came to important life decisions or social situations though. It wasn't until I moved out (and abroad) at age 21 that they finally started taking me seriously and treating me like an adult.



lostonearth35
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23 Aug 2010, 2:07 pm

Even though I have been living in an apartment by myself for several years now I really don't think my parents think I'm an adult. But I don't think I really act like an adult either. :oops: I never learned to drive a car, and I can't afford one anyway so they often have to drive me to appointments. I don't have a salary, I get a disability check each month but of course it's not enough so they give me extra money each week. I don't know how to do things without their help like income taxes and junk. :oops: I can buy my own groceries, cook my own meals, do my own chores, chew and swallow my own food (okay maybe I'm not THAT hopeless :roll:) , but I feel I am too dependent on my parents and they're not going to be around forever. My mom said it's okay it will all be taken care of but I really don't know what I'll do... :(



thingfish11
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21 Oct 2010, 12:12 pm

I guess my parents are still waiting for me to grow up. Since I lack the classic NT signs of maturity, they can't help but react to that. It is so much easier to interact with my son, also AS. I wish they would realise I'm 36, and this is what you get. They also don't really like to believe psychological professionals and think I am just lazy or not trying hard enough. My mom and my 15 yr old son and I were in Chicago, and she treated me as if I had never driven a car before, yelling and adding stress to already stressful Chicago traffic. We haven't spoken since that trip, like 4 months ago.



Robdemanc
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25 Oct 2010, 5:59 am

I think when my mother decided to go out to work as well as my dad we all had to start looking after ourselves a bit better and make our own food. We did ok. I was about 10. But I don't think it was until I turned 30 and had just got a degree that my parents finally thought I had grown up.



Kaybee
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25 Oct 2010, 8:39 am

I suppose I was eleven or twelve. I was always the smart, quiet, responsible one. My mother has come to me for advice far more times than I have gone to her.


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Dear_one
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26 Oct 2010, 12:57 am

Mom was AS, and ex-military. She first treated me as a subordinate adult, and then as as an equal once I could out-debate her. (She then avoided debate.) Dad was just frustrated with me, but he did eventually invite me to visit him when I was 22. He died suddenly before the invitation date. I had tracked him down and shown up looking more normal than ever before, but it wasn't a good time for a visit.



Joe90
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02 Jun 2011, 8:05 am

Everybody started treating me like an adult when I was 14. I know this is VERY unique to say this, but I hated it! I didn't want to grow up. My mind was much younger than 14, and being treated and expected to act like an adult made it feel like too much pressure for me. People even said, ''you're grown up now.'' And I was like, ''no - I'm still a school kid. Let me be a kid for just a few years longer!''


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CockneyRebel
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04 Jun 2011, 11:08 am

My parents started treating me like an adult the day that my mum picked me up from the Hospital after that dumb blonde had the ambulance take me away, because I'm obsessed with The Kinks. It was that morning when the counselor at the hospital talked to me, than my mum than to the both of us about the things on my mind, that things started to change for the better until last June, though things are getting better again.


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freebird1987
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26 Jan 2012, 11:16 am

They never have and they probably never will. The funny thing is that they expect me to act like an adult but treat me like a child.

Of course, there's also the classic "If you wanted to be treated like an adult, you have to act like an adult." But treating your child like a child will only encourage them to act like a child. If you never get treated like an adult, how can you ever learn to act like one?

My mom keeps telling me that I need to be more independent, but she always stops me when I try.



tabby676
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26 Jan 2012, 12:15 pm

They never did.
We haven't had any contact since 1999.



fiooo
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26 Jan 2012, 8:56 pm

Since I got a bachelors degree and moved out...



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29 Jan 2012, 5:03 am

They took me more seriously when I moved out. Ever since I've learned alot and they've learned to appreciate me more



RosieLea
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01 Feb 2012, 1:40 pm

I always go to my mom with 'adult' problems, such as my taxes, and when my house went into foreclosure, that sort of thing. I make her call people for me sometimes because I get nervous over the phone.

But as a kid my dad was an alcoholic and my mother severely depressed, so I was cooking and cleaning the house by age 7 or 8, watching my siblings for 8 hours a day in the summers when I was 11, and basically being the voice of reason among the family, mostly because I didnt have the emotional hang-ups the rest of them did. I tended to be calm, honest, and practical when everyone else were turning into basket-cases.