What age did you think you were an adult?

[jennymanara]

Just found out on MN yesterday that in Scotland you are legally an adult at 16, I know in England and Wales it is 18. Don't know with NI.

But when did you first consider yourself an adult? Even if your parents would not have agreed?
I thought of myself as an adult at 16 years old. I was working full-time from 16.

Do you mean an adult or a grown-up?

I've been legally an adult for many more years than I haven't, but am still waiting for the oncoming enlightenment of elder wisdom that I anticipated as a child would make me a grown-up

@MaudebeGonne Thank you

After I had a house and a baby. So 28 I'm still not sure 6 years later tbh

Hur Hur - still not at 59!

Perhaps cos I have not had kids? I have cared for my mum and we laughed about the role reversal bit.

I'm 37 and I'm not an adult. misses point

I just wondered if it was me.

For all those who haven’t reached being an adult yet, have you stopped seeing those friends who have become more adult in their ways.

I look back and seem to change friends every 10-15 years because they get old and boring and start trying to tell me that the NT/knitting/listening to cricket is really interesting.

When I started working in a professional role with the public and I realised that other people were looking to me for advice and acting on the recommendations I gave them.

What really rammed it home was when I started working in a Higher Education establishment and realised that not just the 18/19 year old students but even the mature students were looking to me for guidance.

In my home life though I still don't feel like I've actually achieved adulthood.

Oliversmumsarmy that's not about being an adult, that's about hobbies. I have no idea what the NT is and can't knit and have no interest in cricket but I'm an adult. It's about taking responsibility and not expecting other people to sort your mistakes out - not about not making mistakes, not about hobbies.

I find people who claim not to have grown up are usually quite image obsessed and want other people to think they're young and fun. That doesn't stop them being responsible adults though.

If you'd fight tooth and nail against having your adult rights and responsibilities taken away by a well meaning parental figure, you don't actually believe that you're not grown up.

Nobody really has it all figured out and we all know that.

Horribly it was after DSDad died and I had travelled up to be with DM.

Due to the unexpected nature of his death she had no money, no car, etc for a couple of weeks. I remember trailing her around Waitrose and picking out food for her, then paying for it and putting it in her fridge.

I'd always imagined being a grown up would be a lot more fun for some reason

Aged 22 and two weeks, when i had to identify my dad's body and realised that was it. I was now an orphan and would have to deal with all the paperwork and arrangements in informing people.

Like a lot of other posters, mine was burying a parent - in my case, my DM when I was 29 and she died very suddenly. I was dealing with funeral directors and the coroner's office, then probate and HMRC, and it felt extremely adult, tying up the ends of someone else's life - without the person I would have turned to for help under normal circumstances.

In that year I became the eldest surviving member of my extended family.

I was an adult by 16 (scotland) but I never really felt like a grown up until ds1 was born when I was 25. I'm 32 now and still have moments of feeling like I'm pretending to be an adult but the older I get the less I feel like I'm pretending.

I'm 51 and still feel like a hopeless 16 year old making it up as I go along. Only the nagging aches and pains in knees and hips after long walks remind me I'm no longer a teenager.

House, business, 6 kids and have lived in a place where people wanted people wanted to blow me up because of my EXs job and i still havent grown up

About 32 when I had to arrange everything to do with moving our business with nowhere near enough notice. Not just my family's financial stability at stake, but our employees too, all resting on making the right decisions. And every single time I have to discipline someone at work.

Probably 23. I'd finished my MSc, got a career job where I could really stand on my own feet and was in the process of moving in with now DH.