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Original poster

So, I’m ‘the grown up’ then?

77 replies

TheTeethingPoo · 06/12/2019 09:10

I’ve managed to get to my thirties and only this week have I realised I’m ‘the grown up’.

When perusing the new eyebrow bar in the bus station in town, two teenage boys of about 13/14 were lurking nearby:

Teen 1: ask that woman there

Teen 2 shuffled over to me: ‘excuse me miss, I’ve lost my bus pass and I’m not sure what to do’

My mind couldn’t believe that 1) I was the woman, 2) he called me miss and 3) trusted me to fix a problem.

I also was thinking ‘how the fuck should I know? Maybe I should phone my mum?’ Instead I asked if he’d been to the help desk, and walked him over to the help desk to see if it had been handed in. Suggested calling a parent for a lift (both working apparently). Convinced the help desk to give him a free pass to get the bus home and told him to leave his name and number (and parents name/number) with the help desk in case it’s handed in.

He left me with a little wave and a ‘thank-you miss’.

So, it’s official I’m ‘the grown up’. I’m now supposed to have the answers for the youths in my mind I’m still 17!!

What moment made you realise you were ‘the grown up’?

It should be noted, I had my 6 month old with me but even becoming a parent didn’t shock me into grown-up mode

OP posts:

snowballer · 06/12/2019 11:22

Going to parents evenings for my children. Seemed more grown up than just having children at school somehow. And endlessly being called Mrs Snowballer at school. I feel ancient. But prefer that to being addressed as "Mum" by health visitors, nursery workers etc

ShinyGiratina · 06/12/2019 11:22

I'm still blagging adulthood.

I did laugh a few years ago when a chap doing a tourism survey asked "16-24 or 25-34?" and I replied "35-44!" I have a small build and look quite young and was difficult to pick out in a classroom of y7s if not standing at the front, so people do tend to underestimate my age, which can come across in their interractions and not particularly condusive to grown-upping. DH is also very well established at it and it tends to be easier to let him crack on and just get the headlines rather than drown in his depth of detail.

It does surprise me that DS is now shoulder height. I'm about to have to do some tedious grown-upping over his SNs. I fully accept that the DCs will tower above me in not so many years, but it is coming up quickly! Maybe parenting wasn't such a surprise as I was already a teacher and did youth work.

I'm quite looking forwards to my 40th birthday as it's just too funny. It amuses me when I get IDed and prove that I was old enough to buy alcohol last century

What does surprise me is how babyfaced the youth are and how middle-aged some people in the media are looking when I associate them as being youthful forgetting it's not the mid-90s anymore. Some of my school friends are beginning to creep to middle-age, and I'm still stuck on a 20 year old mental image, but what I see in the mirror hasn't changed notably.
I'm a decade older than DS2's teacher and he's no NQT! DS1 has one of the older teachers, but she's about the same age as my brother.

Original poster

TheTeethingPoo · 06/12/2019 12:09

Some of these are funny but some are really quite sad - it is very strange how it just hits you all of a sudden and everyone’s is different.

But special congratulations to Minty who seems to be so grown up they’ve put the only superior comment on the thread.

OP posts:

Besidesthepoint · 06/12/2019 12:15

Around the age of 20 when exMIL had terminal cancer and we needed to take care of her because there was no one else and later arrange the funeral and the selling of the house and sorting out belongings and doing the taxes and telling everyone and every company that she died. Looking back we were very young, but we just got on with it. Not that we had a choice really.

MintyMabel · 06/12/2019 12:30

But special congratulations to Minty who seems to be so grown up they’ve put the only superior comment on the thread.

Oh give over. Plenty of things remind me I'm the actual adult. But it's hard to imagine you worry you're getting it wrong helping some kids with a bus pass in your thirties.

Ohyesiam · 06/12/2019 12:32

Actually op, you sound very good at adulting. You can own it with pride.

wasthatamistake · 06/12/2019 13:28

Op minty is like that on every thread just ignore.

antisupermum · 06/12/2019 13:29

I was walking down the street last week, past a school just as the school bus pulled up. A much older man said "Remember the buses we had back in our day? Nothing like those fancy buses"
I thought "How very dare you, I wasn't alive in your day"!

I just nodded and smiled, of course

GoKartMozart · 06/12/2019 13:35

Probably this.
In fact no. No probably about it

ParkheadParadise · 06/12/2019 13:35

Going to Dd's first parents evening at school.
I was 20 yrs old, walking in to face my old teacher.

Deathraystare · 06/12/2019 13:41

Well, I was shocked to discover in early January I will be 60!!!! So no longer a teenager then.....

1point21gigawatts · 06/12/2019 13:45

I was reminded a month or so ago when both dds and I came down with a tummy bug. DH just started a new job, so couldn't take time off, so it was all down to me. There was no one to take care of me and I had to take care of two children while also being sick and the other end too!! Yep. That made me feel like an adult, and a bloody miserable one too. Felt about 90 by the end of it!

Legomadx2 · 06/12/2019 13:48

Nice thread.

When I saw my DS had pubes it made me feel VERY old.

(Before anyone accuses me of being weird, I walked into the bathroom in a hotel not realising he was getting into the bath.)

I imagine I'll feel even older when he starts dating...

Exploring · 06/12/2019 13:52

My sister does dinner parties where the kids go off upstairs for a movie and pizza, I still try and go upstairs 😂

hiddenmnetter · 06/12/2019 14:19

But it's hard to imagine you worry you're getting it wrong helping some kids with a bus pass in your thirties.

Did you perhaps so to consider that OP wasn't asking herself if she was doing the right thing morally, but was asking if she was doing things correctly? That the experience of being an adult was down to working out what to do in a practical way without any prior information or experience and no-one else to turn to for advice or guidance? And that the worry was about saying it making a mistake about resolving the problem...

Yeesh minty... It's hard to imagine you didn't get that deliberately wrong, as it's easy to imagine you might be giving poor/wrong advice if you haven't been in that situation before.

SuperMeerkat · 06/12/2019 14:47

I’m 36 and feel like you @TheTeethingPoo The other day I was in a queue and a little girl tried to go ahead and her mum said ‘no, the lady was here first’ I was like, ‘who, who??’ Oh, she means me!!

SamBeckett · 06/12/2019 14:58

I don't think I have grown up yet dispite sorting my Ddads funeral out , been married and widowed , holding down a responsible job.

Some nights I still feel like I need someone to tell me it's bedtime because I am falling asleep while mumsnetting working

DrIrisFenby · 06/12/2019 15:14

Mine was running a first aid activity for Brownies. I was about 22/23.

Me (pointing): Right. You pretend to be the injured person, you pretend to be the person who finds them and I'll pretend to be an adult.
Brownie (looking puzzled): But .... you ARE an adult!
Me: Oh... yes... I suppose I am

ShadowOnTheSun · 06/12/2019 16:31

Yup. In my mind I'm about 19 (I'm 32 in January). Didn't have 'that particular moment' yet, but I often catch myself 'looking for an adult'.

Like, when some 'serious issue' arises. Annual tax return. Mild panic. TAX? Omg! TAX? It's like something old boring people do, a very big, serious and intimidating thing, that's not ME. And then I go and do it. Or boiler breaks down. Panic again. Well surely it's not for ME to deal with, boiler, what boiler, what is boiler, what does it want, what planet did it come from, I need to phone my dad/landlord/brother/any other adult!!! And then I deal with it, but I still feel like I'm an imposter, pretending to be an adult and pretending to know what I'm doing.

Sometimes when I'm with/around other people, I catch myself thinking that they're somehow 'more adult', sure of themselves, know very well what they're doing/supposed to do, much better at 'adulting' than me. I always thought it's just me, good to see that there are more people like that :).

marvelousways · 06/12/2019 16:46

I'm 47. I still don't fully believe Im a grown up - or maybe I just don't want to be. In the last couple of weeks we have had to have a new boiler fitted, we put down new floors and had some repairs done to the roof. I just kept thinking - but these are things for a grown up to sort out, it cant be down to me surely!

ChiaraRimini · 06/12/2019 18:26

My oldest DC has now got his first full time job, that made me feel old. Especially when we had the same conversation about pensions that I had with my dad at his age...

Original poster

TheTeethingPoo · 06/12/2019 18:59

So basically we’re all just pretending to be ‘the grown-up’ until someone more grown-up than us comes along.

Good to know! Might check with my mother to see who her grown up is

OP posts:

Aycharow · 06/12/2019 23:39

I feel a bit more grown-up now because today I have just become a Great-Aunt smile]

MrsFionaCharming · 06/12/2019 23:55

When I was in my early 20s, one of my friends told me she was suicidal, beyond trying to comfort her I had no idea what to do. So I googled it, and all the suggestion websites were aimed at teens and included “tell an adult”... so I told her mum!

I finally felt like an adult in my mid-twenties, running a Guide activity on a sunny day, with other leader in her twenties. One of the mums hung around for ages saying things like “you’ll need to remind them to drink water” and “you’ll have to tell them to reapply sunscreen soon”, and I for the first time I thought “I am a bloody adult you know, I do know these things!”

aHintOfPercy · 07/12/2019 00:11

I've always been the grown-up, I suppose its down to a chaotic, unstable childhood and a useless mother. I have enjoyed reading these comments though as my 28 year old DD rings me over the most ridiculous things, and I thought it's because I've mollycoddled her but it seems she's quite normal and I'm the odd one!

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