to think 25 year olds shouldn't be hanging around with 18 year olds?

I turned 25 in my first year at uni. It was a practical drama course and I was working closely with others on the course who were 18/19 and naturally we became friends. The alternative was having no friends 🤷🏻‍♀️

What she finds odd is, as you stated, is this person weaving herself into the fabric of their day-to-day. Not just joining nights out, or events for the mutual hobby. Picking them up from college during the day and taking them to her house for ... the rest of the entire afternoon/evening.

I just don't see the issue. That's what friends do - they hang out with each other, they help each other out and spend time together after work/college. I was always with my friends at that age - at someone's house or just hanging out at Starbucks. We'd always pick the house with no adults/parents around where possible as it was just nicer.

If this girl was the same age and just happened to be the only one with a license and a job, would it still be weird? Or is it only weird based on some arbitrary rule about what friendship is?

AllegraWalterJones
I suspect you're right. I think the OP is getting a hard time, but having taught upper 6th and thinking back to myself at 18/19, 18/19 year olds don't suddenly gain adult level maturity the day they hit legal adulthood.

I'm surprised so many people think it's normal for an adult in their mid 20s to attach themselves to a teen/young adult friendship group, and doubt they'd be so chilled out about a 25 year old man attaching himself to a group of teens.

*have had... and still do of course 😎

As usual people can't be arsed to RTFT. They're still blathering on about their 'friends of a different age group'. When the OP's 2nd post has clearly covered this! She is ok with that, and in facts 'expects' people to have a range of friends with different ages.

What she finds odd is, as you stated, is this person weaving herself into the fabric of their day-to-day. Not just joining nights out, or events for the mutual hobby. Picking them up from college during the day and taking them to her house for ... the rest of the entire afternoon/evening.

I don't even know how an adult with a full-time job (presumably she has one?) even has time to do all that. Of course, not everyone has 9-5 so she may be free during the day.

I myself have had friends of different age groups, we have all hung out together or separately. It's never been as concentrated as this though. That's what's odd.

But people who see it as 'normal' 'because age and adults' are probably not going to get it.

I don"t think it's that unusual to mainly stick to your rough age group when you are still in education

I would say that 18 and 25 are both still within the same "rough age group", though.

Personally I feel as though it must be very limiting to live your life via a random set of imaginary rules. Some of my closest friends over the years are people who are in totally different "life stages" to me - when I was at university and about 19, one of my closest friends was a disabled mother in her 50's. We also met online which would probably horrify many people on here

What is odd is a 25 year old adult meeting someone online and then attaching themselves to a teen friendship group. That's not what most adults do.

I don't think she's "attached herself to a teen friendship group".

She's met someone via an online hobby who happens to be a teenager. They've met up in real life and got on well, and now hang out together as part of a larger group.

That's not remotely odd to me. When I was younger, lots of my friends were friends of friends that I met online or on random nights out. Some were my age, some older, some younger - some male and some female. It was just a totally normal way to meet new people. Age was irrelevant - if we got along, we got along.

I think a lot of people are missing the point. Of course adults have friends of different ages. Of course we make work friendships with people much older or younger. The title of the post belies the content which is about a specific 26 year old and a group of 18 year olds. It should say "is this 26 year old acting inappropriately?" or similar.

As I said before I agree, in this case, it is odd, though probably harmless. At 18 myself all my friends were 17 or 18 as we were in upper sixth. At university most people were my age or a year or two older. It's only when I started work and was in my early 20s that I started mixing with people much older, and yes socialised with people in their 30s, 40s etc.

Initially it felt like there were "adults" like me and my friends, and other adults who were properly grown up or had been grown up for years. I don"t think it's that unusual to mainly stick to your rough age group when you are still in education. The only people I remember on my course who were much older were in their 40s and had no interest in socialising with the rest of us.

And I do think there is something in having friends at the same stage of life. Parents gravitate to other parents, singles to other singles. Naturally they have more in common. I have been closer or less close to long term friends at different times according to what is happening in my / their lives (friends with kids weren't always my first choice when I was grappling with infertility, for example).

Blancmangemouse
Like you I've got similar experiences.

During college I had friends in their 20s, 30s and 40s from work and volunteering. They were great people and I'm still friends with some of them to this day.

None of them befriended my college friends though, none of them integrated themselves into my friendship group of similar aged peers, none of them came to pick me up from 6th form so I could chill at their house, and none of them wanted to sleep over at my house/have me sleep over at theirs.

The issue to me isn't that an 18 year old might have a friend who is older. That's not a problem. What is odd is a 25 year old adult meeting someone online and then attaching themselves to a teen friendship group. That's not what most adults do.

In my late teens I became good friends with a lady in her late 40s. I was really fond of her and devastated when she died of cancer at just 50. That friendship taught me a lot.

I don’t know what your problem is. Some of my friends are 20-30 years older than me.
some are 6-7 yrs younger. Been friends for years.
it doesn’t matter when you’re an adult.

It's very strange and symptomatic of the infantilization of young adults into their 20s (and beyond). 20 or 30 years ago plenty of 16 year olds were in full-time work and nobody would have thought anything of them being friends or socializing with much older colleagues.

Oh and it’s no only about life stage, but personality!

As a teen in school I got on like a house on fire with one of the cleaners in her 40s.
As an older teen in uni I gelled with a course-mate who was 28.
As a young professional ages 25 or so I have a huge laugh with colleagues aged 40-50.

I agree. Adults don't have "sleepovers".

I think you need to stop thinking of your DD as a child.
She is an adult and can have other adults as friends. When I was 18 I was friends with plenty of people in their mid to late 20s. Some of them were on my course, some of them were friends of friends and their siblings or housemates.
You need to chill.

I don't think this is odd really. I had a frienship group when I was at college, three of us the same age and a couple of their friends who were in their mid-twenties. We weren't at massively different life stages, some at college some in fulltime jobs sure but we were all young and liked our nights out/in and had similar relationship statuses. Can't see how it really matters.

No I don't know why it would be weird. I had friends between ages 18-30 when 18.

Of course if friendships are based on neighbours etc the reason for hanging out is clear, people have a common history and familiarity if they were cousins/neighbours/church group. And 'the group' provides some context as well. An online game doesn't.

Why is being friends with a neighbour anymore logical than being friends with someone you've met via a mutual interest?

I'd find it very boring to only be friends with people in the same "life stage" as me 🤷‍♀️

Also... 18 vs 28 is very different from 38 vs 48!
The entirety of 'above 18' isn't just a big 'adults, do adult things' clump. Your brain doesn't magically have an adult switch at that age./ It's just what we decided the legal definition is...

It's not about age though - but life stages. On MN everyone is happy to chuck their kids out and declare them 'adults' at 18. But there's a big difference between 19 year old schoolchildren and, say one who's been working since the age of 16 and was fully independent.

Of course if friendships are based on neighbours etc the reason for hanging out is clear, people have a common history and familiarity if they were cousins/neighbours/church group. And 'the group' provides some context as well. An online game doesn't.

You can rationalise all you like but friendships do have logic. I'd wonder what a 26 year old had in common with a bunch of teenagers, but more importantly why they didn't have any friends of their own age. This make sense if, say. Maybe the OP's daughter and her friends are 'nerd girls' in a small town, and there aren't many about. And they talk about video games all day. Fair enough.

It doesn't make any sense if they're in a big city and there are loads of other meetups etc where 26 year old could find people closer to her life stage. In that case, maybe she enjoys the 'big sister' dynamic which I wouldn't find particularly healthy.

What I meant was, it doesn't sound like she set out to find to a group of teenagers to hang out with - she just found something in common with a group of girls who happen to be a few years younger than her.

I mean, isn't having sleepovers and giving lifts just...part of being in a friendship group?

What on earth is wrong with it? Adults mix with all ages- I would worry about an adult who insisted on restricting their company to people within a year or two of their own age. Even with children, it's mainly a result of children's friendships nowadays being mainly based around school, and therefore their year groups. In the days when friendships were more often with cousins or neighbours, they tended to be a bit less age-stratified. In any case, your DD is now an adult.

It may be, for all I know, that this particular person has characteristics that you or your dd dislike, or is exploiting or dominating her friends in some way; but it shouldn't be equated with age. As I sometimes say, it would now be (I hope) frowned on to be hostile or suspicious toward a friendship between people of different nationalities or ethnicities, and I don't think there's much difference between rejecting someone for where they were born and rejecting them for when they were born.

I think people in their late teens and early twenties generally like making friends and having new experiences so they’re more open minded and easy going about small age differences.

😁I always had older and younger friends growing up and in general tend to get along with people from different generations.

In the OP, it says she’s going on sleep overs and picking them up from school. That certainly sounds like going out of her way to spend time with them.