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

[razzille]

My daughter is 18 and has plenty of friends a similar age to her (the oldest is 21). However, there's this 25, almost 26 year old who seems to be integrating with her and her friends an awful lot. She is often there on nights out with, has been at sleepovers, etc. it's rather strange to me. What I like even less is it's not like she is particularly delayed for her age (she lives on her own etc) and often DD and her friends will be at her place or 2 of DD's friends are sixth formers/in college and she has picked them up from literally school before. I just find it all a little strange. I can't see what a 26 year old has in common with teenagers.

When I was 17 I had a lot of older friends through work, both male and female. They were the first group who took me clubbing. One of the other girls there was 15 and she would come too, she looked a lot older than her age so she never got asked for ID. It was great, never felt weird although it probably would be now.

Away with your logic and common sense

Weird then that this 25 year old only seems to hang out with 18 year olds.

What's the upper age limit to be friends with an 18 year old without it being weird? Is there an age you get to when it's fine to be friends with anyone of any age or is there always a limit?
I don't think it's weird for an 18 year old to have older friends.

I do think it's weird for an adult in their mid 20s to chat to one person online and then attach themselves to a friendship group of 6th formers, pick them up from college and have sleepovers.

The way I see it is there have been several 18/19 year olds in clubs I've done and workplaces I've been at since my mid 20s. Would I socialise with them? Yes. Have I been friends with them? Yes. Would we do events linked to a shared hobby? Yes. Would I do work nights out with them? Yes.

BUT

• Would I have tagged along and inserted myself into their peer group of 6th formers? Not a chance.
• Would I have driven to their college and picked them up? No.
• Would I want to have a group of teenagers come round my house and chill? No.
• Would I have had sleepovers with a handful of teenagers? Absolutely not.

Of course, if it happens organically. There was always a spread of ages from 20 somethings to 50 somethings on my works nights out. That does not mean it isn’t a bit strange for a 25 year old to go out of their way to spend time with a group of 18 year olds.

Yes this OP. I agree, it's a bit off.
It's getting into the entire 'friendship group', rather than just being a 25 year old friend.
I don't think she means any harm. Maybe as they met through an online game she's a bit of a loner and finds it hard to make any other friends as there aren't many female gamers online.

I'd still find it odd though.

*for the record I am a gamer girl too...

25 is no where near 30! She's half a decade off that still.

Lots of people I met at uni as an 18yo were 24-26. Was I supposed to not be friends with them because they're in their mid 20s?

Where does it say she's "going out of her way to spend time with a group of eighteen year olds"?

They're just a group of people who all happen to play the same online game. Why is that a less organic way of meeting someone than if they'd met at choir practise or down the pub?

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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 🤷‍♀️

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

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.

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 agree. Adults don't have "sleepovers".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.