When are you an adult ?

This is going to sound daft, but its a question my charming little god daughter asked me and now I am thinking about it there is no easy answer. Even the law in ambiguous with this. At 16 you are no longer a ward of the state if in care, you can make your own medical decisions, and marry with parents permission. You can have your own cash card, but you can't do a lot of things.

So you all think well you have to be 18 to be an adult, and yes in principle that's the legal answer you can vote, give blood and so on, but with more and more people going to university, you still need the bank of mum and dad to get you especially now their income is what decides how much you pay. So you aren't truly independent so are you really an adult. Going by the government changes and the way universities work, and the fact you can't stand for Parliament before society has made it really 23. Now that got me thinking, by 23 I had already collected a back catalogue of operations myself, was just about to take POA on my grandfather. I had organised a friends mothers move after a stroke, travel abroad to represent the UK, and been to college and simultaneously held down a permanent job. So if anyone told me I wasn't an adult I would have been more than offended.

 But back to the original question when is a person an adult?  in the context she asked it was funny as it was on the directions of using a hot water bottle. It read suitable for adult use only! how vague could that be, I mean an adult could be anyone 16 or over yet a drunken adult is no safer than a 5 year old child. In the same way I know 15 year old who have more maturity than some one my husbands age, it is all about context. What life experiences a child has defines what level of maturity they have. I always had the chance to mix in the adult world, and by my early teens I was performing in the adult world of music, as were my closest friends so our level of maturity was so far ahead of some of our peers, school was belittling to us, its not we didn't want to learn but the way we were being taught was nothing short of patronising us. Only one of us succeed in school and that's because she was in a performing arts school which worked on a different level and style of education.

Our life styles were far from conventional, we could easily be in rehearsals till gone 10 on a school night, or even have to ditch school with permission to go and perform or take exams and so on. Many a time I took an exam at lunch time or just after but not get taken back to school. Instead I would spend the afternoon with the other musicians around drinking coffee and learning stuff about performance. I did miserably at high school academically, yet when I moved to college where I was treated like an adult and they accepted my other commitments I excelled with very high grades, it was the environment and the treatment as I did the subjects I wanted in half the time all from scratch and not one below o level pass. That life style suited me and my friends who by the way were friends from like 1 years old so they weren't made in the industry we just were all alike that way. In the way I believe my god daughter has inherited our tendencies, without the performance related interests. She hasn't coped with the school environment, but I believe will excel in college.

Hence my belief you can't define adulthood by physical age alone, it depends on so much and the confidence of the person. So what was my answer to my god daughter tonight, it was simple. If you believe you can do it, then do so, if not don't. Give children enough rein that they can try but not enough to hang themselves. Fair enough I am not a parent and never pretend to be, but I remember how I liked to be treated as child. I also have a fantastic god daughter who can tell me anything, and I can always get the truth out of her with little effort. Saying that she has just turned round and said I don't act old like the other adults, which raises a more scary question, one worth thinking about.

"When did we forget to find our inner child?"