To ask when did you first feel like an adult?

[ArgfromTowie]

I saw in the paper about 50 signs you are an adult , so just wondering when you first felt like one

I think the first time was getting my first job and obviously pay check

Whenever I use the term "the kids" when talking about DS and DD.

I'm 57,pretending to be an adult but still worry I'll be found out!

When I was 26 and walking along a shopping centre near my work in the US with a friend. We saw a group of 4 girls by themselves, maybe 10 to 12 years old, dressed inappropriately for their age.

I turned to my friend and said "Where are their parents? It's almost 8 o'clock at night and they're out dressed like that by themselves!"

So basically when I started understanding the things that grown-ups told me as a child that I'd understand when I was older, that's when I first felt like an adult.

to everyone who has lost someone.

I'm in my 30s, married, 2 DC, quite a lot of responsibility at work, own a house etc. I still don't feel like a grown up.

When, at the age of 20, I read the eulogy at my grandad’s funeral.

I was nominated to do this as I was the first person in our family to go to university, and therefore the only one deemed competent to write and deliver a coherent ten minute speech. I held it together because I had to.

Today. I got the tube all by myself. I am 30 and northern

I used to have panic attacks on the tube, then my sister moved to London. She always used to accompany me, but she needed to get a different line & I needed to get to KX so I got the tube, all on my own.

Katya that’s a wonderful feeling isn’t it, when you know you’ve conquered a fear. Proper grown up.

When I went on Erasmus. Fending for myself in a different country for a year really did it for me.

Uups, should have said 27.

When someone at a bus stop called me Mr

Another for whom it was sadly when my Mum died. I was aged 31 and like PPs married, mortgaged, and had a child but still felt like a fraud of an adult until then. It's the feeling of being the oldest generation of your family for me.

Since then both another child and ongoing issues around my Mum's estate which have required employing some very non-fluffy solicitors (the little previous experience I had was conveyancing etc) have cemented the feeling.

When my darling Mum passed away for me, too. Still affects me every day. Hugs for everyone who has lost their Mum. It’s like nothing else.

When DP and I were buying a new washing machine and found ourselves watching video reviews of them online on a Friday night!

I bought my first fancy scented candle yesterday. I’m home-making. That might count? Thanks MN.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because all the other mums around me seem like proper mums, very tidy and calm and put-together and confident. I’m a bubbling, wheezing, self-deprecating mess 99% of the time. I have been wondering at what point I missed out on the adulthood thing. I’m trying to get there.

While I still don’t feel like an adult I can remember the first time I really felt like a parent. I was pushing baby DS in his pram and we stopped to watch a cat. It pounced and disappeared for a second then jumped back up with a bird between its teeth. Instead of being a jibbering mess about “the poor birdy” I was just thinking of DS. He didn’t care of course. It was that sudden understanding that someone else’s needs now always come before yours down to the most basic emotional reactions.

I had my I-am-an-adult moment when I bought a new coat a couple of years ago. It had some extra buttons in case you lose one. I snipped them off and thought "I'll put them in the button box". Then I thought "OMG - I actually have a button box?!!!"

I was 33 and had 2 kids!

When I had my daughter and realised it was our job to keep her alive and happy. My days of it being all about me were over and a huge new chapter had started. I was 30.

When DH and I got engaged! I was 31, had had a mortgage since I was 22, worked full time and was very independent but the first thing I said after he gave me the ring was “oh god I feel like a grown up!”
I still have days that I can’t believe I’m really an adult/grown up.

I think for me it was after my mother died when I was 10 & I found myself making sure my 7yo sister brushed her hair/cleaned her teeth/washed her face properly; & generally started taking on an ever-increasing amount of responsibility for my family & our home.

At the same time, I often feel not grown up at all - all that hugely accelerated growing up left a very frightened child somewhere at the centre, with a quiet longing for a childhood & adolesence lost & missed (even before my mother died I felt responsible for more than most 10yos & had provided life-saving care for my mother while waiting for an ambulance on more than one occasion [something my younger sister was shielded from]).

Despite that, I'm still the hugely capable person people come to when they need an adultier adult. Because I will be calm & I will Know What To Do & I will somehow make them feel It Will Be Ok. I'm not sure if any of them realise that despite so much - too much - practice at Adulting, I would really like, just for a bit, to have someone else Adult.

I was 49 had to sell the family home following getting divorced, get a mortgage & buy another home. It was the first time I honestly felt a grown up.

I'm forty and I still don't feel like one.

When I started my first day as a "proper" primary teacher after I completed my post grad and no longer needed supervision. I walked into the classroom and the kids were going crazy as the teacher of their previous lesson had left them early. I stood in the doorway and thought "Where on earth is their teacher, there should be an adult in here!" before I realised, there was a teacher and I was the responsible adult in the room.

Probably at 19 when I moved out but then found out my mum was very poorly with alcoholism and took care of her alongside working and studies. Then even moreso when she died when I was 22. Realising at both ages I was now a young woman who couldn't rely on her mum for advice or to lean on anymore matured me very fast.

As many others have said, when a parent died. For me, it was my Dad. It was a sign that I really HAD to take care of myself, even though I had been doing so for years.

When I left XP. I was 22, and after I'd helped him pack his things and seen him off, I came home and then realised- it was all on me. The rent, the bills, no more taking turns getting up to DD when she was sick, all me.

I ate a whole pizza, cried, and then pulled my socks up and got on with it.

ImperfectPirouette

You are me and I claim my five pounds.

I'm dealing with a very stressful situation at the moment (shenanigans with a builder) and I wish more than anything for my Dad to just come and rescue me.

But then I have to remind myself that I have to be like my Dad, be strong, and not let this CF take the piss. A lifetime of Being In Charge really takes its toll though.

Yes I have read The Cinderella Complex!