24 is the new 18?

[MikeRafone]

Do you think young people take much longer to grow up?

I find people staying in education, helicopter parents, not letting children out alone until much older, keep teenagers much more infantile than previous generations

I did let both my dc out to playing the 90s and 00, expect them to get jobs at 16, expected them to pay rent, get themselves places on the bus from 11 years old, out cycling or walking g to school, out at the weekends and no tracking back then.

teens seem to be much more immature, lovely but not in the slightest grown up.

I remember starting work though and having the same, people telling me that at 18 they were married with their own home and not living with parents and grifting along!

In moist cases Extremely immature and entitled
Also the total lack of general knowledge is something I find incredible and sad

Mine are independent, pretty self assured, both DD’s and both dsds moved out, dsd was last to go at 23. But I dont mollycoddle, though dsd1 has carers 24/7 due to very high needs so obviously theres input with professionals.

In moist cases Extremely immature and entitled

I think it’s odd to think most young people are immature & entitled. And pretty sad too.

No, I think effective, attuned parenting creates healthy, well-rounded adults, and punitive or narrow ideas of what children should or should not be doing by a certain age breeds judgement and stunted maturity.

The school insisted on talking to my daughter about her 18 year old missing a class and were not at all impressed when she pointed out that he was an adult and suggested they discuss it with him 😂

If you have a 17/18 year old at school you still have parental responsibility for them.

And this is perhaps why people are querying whether we keep them as
children too long

100% agree.

I think it's good. We knows their brains aren't fully developed until around 25. There's no advantage in making them be hugely independent by leaving them to just raise themselves at 10 years old - it might appear impressive but it's much more likely to indicate neglectful parenting and the child developing issues as they get older.

DS was completely molly coddled, supported in every way possible and I was a complete helicopter parent because he is autistic and dyspraxic. I wouldn't have wanted him working at 16 or married at 18, i wanted him focussed on school. My mum was married at 18, working a crap job and had her own house - it was in no way a positive thing.

Thanks to DS being so well supported he is 18 doing a degree apprenticeship in software engineering, working four days a week, uni one day and living away from home, getting the bus to work every day.

People misunderstand what allows children to be successfully independent as much as they misunderstand what allows them to develop healthy resilience.

Well if you have a 17/18 year old in a secondary school the school still have a duty of care so if a teenager is absent, then they have to turn to their parent gaurdian to where they are.

Mine are 22 and 26. Both got jobs at 16 and have always worked, eldest went to uni and moved out after and now owns a house. Youngest finished uni, works full time and is planning on buying a house next year

I find alot of parents infantilise their adult kids.

If anything 9 is the new 15 and 15 is the new 26. Kids grow up so quickly.

My 15yo told me they "done knife crime" in PHSE this week, and next week they're "doing wanking"!!!

No shortage of immature men of any age whether they work or not, most girls are much better

Do you mond me asking where you live? Not specifics

I have a 26 year old stepson who has lived alone for years and is incredibly immature.

I'd moved out, working full-time at 16, driving at 17, travelling at 19 etc and was a LOT more mature by 26.

Sometimes, small town attitudes don't help.

My brothers and i didn't leave hime until we were 25. We are fully functioning, independent adults.

My kids will have a home with me for as long as they need to, but they will have to contribute towards Housekeeping (1/4 of their wage, as i did) once they start full time work.

Theyre not infalitised. My 14 year old is a better cook than I am. He can also do basic DiY and decorating, car maintenance etc. The others will be taught thr same and are expected to pull their weight around the house.

Theyve been allowed to walk to the local shop once they turned 10, 13 and 14 year olds are now regularly getting the bus and train into town or whatever to hang with their friends and known to budget their money so if theyre out all day they can get food or drink. Sometimes I dont see my 13 year old from 9am until 7pm on a weekend.

They do get lifts to school - we live too far to walk for the primary schools and rhe high achool is on the way but otherwise they'd get the school bus.

Round here, all the bedsits and househares are grotty hmos full of drug users. Id rather they lived here longer and be able to find somewhere decent to live. Theyre not likely to go to university.

Maybe it does :)
Also depends whether they start a family of their own I suppose.

I was in full time work at 16, hitched round Europe at 17. I was completely self sufficient. I am old though.

Hopefully that’s a joke. A 7 year old walking home on their own is neglectful. When I was a child in the 1980s we didn’t walk home from school on our own anywhere near that age either. Not those with caring parents that is

You’d better tell the Germans and Dutch this, as it’s a regular occurrence.

No, I don't. I do think there has always been variation among people of the same age, that people can be mature in some areas and not others & that social media magnifies the worst of it both in the worst examples and in treating young people who act immature in one way as if they are universally.

And yes, as we get older, younger people seem more young, immature, and babyfaced.

My 16 year old looks like a sweet immature baby to me, I see her at her and her friends at their silliest, but she's been getting herself around by herself for years, works weekends and half terms on a farm she travels at the crack of dawn to travel nearly 2 hours to get to because she wants to do it, and has dealt with several family deaths and a friend's suicide. She and her friends manage a lot, quite maturely, and people aren't going to see that when they're cackling and relaxing together on the bus.

My 18 and 21 year old also look very baby faced to me - but my 18 year old has had a pension and has discussed pensions for a couple years now. My 21 year old has as well, with detailed financial goals. 16 year old me, who was largely tossed to the wolves by that point, barely gave that a thought. I was in survival mode from my early teens. Thankfully, they haven't had to be that way and so they've both saved up thousands through work and careful spending. Having more support has meant they can be more mature in many ways compared to me in the 'classic' out of home and managing my own household as a teenager.

My 21 year old had pretty much the childhood you're describing, went out to play to his heart's content, got himself everywhere, volunteered many weekends, now has worked on ships off sea and in other countries. He can be very mature. He's also sobbed because he's come to the realization that after all the hard work to get to this position that some would say he's lucky to be in, that he's spending many days miserable. He's dealing with the adult choices of being able to do anything as long as he can deal with the consequences - the debate between completing his contract or dealing with the costs of ending it early; of what will be good for his CV/wallet and what's good for his mental health, of the certainty of his work for at least the next couple years or taking the leap in the current shaky job market. I wasn't dealing with that at his age. Most of the shit my older kids are going through wasn't what I was dealing with at their ages.

Also, schools are put on much higher safeguarding requirements than previously. I don't think it makes kids less mature, I think it's an abundance of caution because shit has happened. There are many things from when I was growing up that I look back and wonder where the fuck was the school safeguarding.

I work with some young ladies and gentlemen in an incredibly high pressure high stakes emergency services role and they are all leagues more mature and together than I was at their age. They just haven't got the luxury of being able to move out of their parents homes because it's too fucking expensive.

And no moving out does not equal maturity. Look at some of the 40 something man children you see posted about on here every other day who go into conniptions if expected to wash their own socks or parent their own children. They probably moved out in their early 20's, they're hardly pinnacles of maturity.

Omg no ..your kids are your kids, no matter their age, help them 24/7

My children are 14&12.... and one of their schools allowed children to walk home alone from Yr3.
In reality, this was usually an older sibling walking home with a younger sibling. But it was a very quiet village, hardly no traffic. Very isolated.

I don't think the age a child walks home from school alone is inductive of their eventual maturity... its usually circumstances not ages that dictates it. Becoming a fully functional adult us a gradual process over the years. They need to learn, to make mistakes... then to learn from from their mistakes.

To an extent I'm late 20s and I see immaturity in people due to economic issues.
The book inheritocracy by Eliza Filby actually looks at this phenomenon, with people taking their parents to job interviews, emailing HR people taking their parents to the nightclub it's actually quite a big issue.