To ask how is adulthood different from what you thought it would be like as a child?

[Cordroy]

I never thought grown adults would have friendship issues.

How wrong I was 😭

I still remember where I was when I first heard "Schooldays are the happiest days of your life". A jovial old man said it to my friend and me when we were in a museum gift shop on a school trip in 1987, buying gigantic red and white striped lollipops. That was obviously a pretty excellent day as school days went, but we were aghast at his remark and tried to put it out of our minds! I definitely found that being a young adult in the days of "Cool Britannia" was inestimably superior to being at a strict junior school in a small town in the 80s. Perhaps that guy's early adulthood had been marred by world wars or depressions or the like, or perhaps I was just overthinking a throwaway remark.

Bills. My parents were always moaning about paying the bills, so I'm not sure why I thought that wouldn't figure in my adult life!

Yes same here!

Anon501178

When I was about 15, I ogled BMW 3 series cars and large detached tudor style houses.
I knew I wanted to work with children in a nursery but goodness knows how I thought that would fund those things!
I remember my mum saying I had better meet a rich husband (didn't happen, although he is great in many more important ways!)
And that I had a 'Rolls Royce mind and a pushbike pocket' 🤣

I thought I’d have horses and dogs and a field with a few stables and an old but working pajero jeep! No idea how I was going to get these!!!

Sorry to hear this ❤️

Of course the obvious one is that I thought from a child’s and young adult’s perspective that sixty year olds would be fully confident and have life completely sorted without any doubts or problems. And they would never feel anxious, uncertain or overwhelmed.

And now I am over sixty, although I am a bit older and wiser, I feel about thirty-five from the inside, and am nowhere near as confident and sorted as I would like to be, and I am just bumbling along like everyone else but with slightly less energy than twenty years ago!

I rather naively imagined that I'd never do cleaning because it was unnecessary and boring and that I would live on ready meals because it would be so easier rather than cooking 😂😂😂

I laughed when my mum commented that serving ready meals for every meal was a) unhealthy and b) unimpressive to any future beau's.

Adult reality: I think ready meals are pretty awful, I cook most food from scratch and I seem to spend all my time cleaning !!

Well I thought I was going to marry Mick Hucknell and it hasn't happened yet. So I guess very disappointing but I try not to focus on it.
Didn't plan on having kids but had my first at 17 so that was a shocker.
Wanted to be a journalist but unfortunately my writing consists of shopping lists to do lists which never get completed and Mumsnet posts.
Once there was hope now only failure.

I don't think I gave it one moment's thought when I was young. On thinking now, I don't suppose I was expecting the noises that happen when I stand up and sit down. I'm also not sure why my body has decided it needs hair to grow out of my ears.

On the plus side, I am able to say 'no' a lot more. I've discovered that many of the things I thought were important are actually meaningless and totally unimportant. And to cherish every moment with those who are special to you as you never know when they may be taken away from you.

That I’d always send and receive a shed load of Xmas cards

That we’d never have the internet

I thought I’d know the answers to everything. And that when I became an adult I’d automatically be really good at things like cooking a Sunday roast or changing a tyre or knitting a jumper. I had no concept that I’d still have to learn how to do things (or that I might never master certain skills!)

I came from a very ordinary WC household, I was the first to go to Uni. The pinnacle of my dreams, the most I could imagine, was to be a teacher and probably in my home town.

I did achieve that - but then got the opportunity to do a Master's - which opened up a whole new world that I didn't know existed.

I went on to do a PhD and teach in HE. I travelled extensively at one point, giving lectures at conferences. It really was beyond my wildest dreams. I never went back to my home town, I live hundreds of miles away from it. A very different life to the one I imagined.

Looking back, I think I’d be surprised to know that you just don’t magically become and feel like a grown up! You just always feel like yourself, you don’t suddenly look at yourself in the mirror and go ‘aha that’s what I look like grown up’ you’re just you the whole time,
does that make sense?

I didn't think that it would be so much fun shagging a man in his mid fifties.

Never thought BHS would go

@Cordroy I also thought people would consider friendship to be important

I also thought work was going to be fascinating and fulfilling!

Great thread.

I thought I’d carry on roller-skating everywhere. I still miss it 😢

Quicksand and secret passages have played a much smaller role in my adult life than I expected.

Am I the only one who gave it no thought whatsoever 😬

Wait for it - I thought I could do whatever I wanted 🤣

Thank you.

Very sad to hear this. 🤣

It’s so much better than I imagined, not having to live with miserable arguing parents!

That being an adult would be easier, and simpler than being a child.
That my 15yo boyfriend would one day be my dh of 25 years.
That I would still like and want to do a lot of the things people said I wouldn’t once I was a grown up.
That being a parent can make you so happy.

I used to wonder how I could ever be as self-sacrificing as my parents. For example, they let me take more than my share of the mint humbugs, eat my cereal out of the favourite bowl with roses on the side, have the first pick of the new toothbrushes so I got my favourite colour, be the one to press the button on the car park ticket machine...

Now that I'm an adult, I have no trouble letting DD have things like this. Not because I'm noble and unselfish, but because I genuinely couldn't give a shit..