When did you start feeling like adults?

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I'm 42. Former Active-Duty Marine.

Still don't feel like an adult.

I'm 24. Right now I live at home with my parents and brother, but that's because my parents and grandma need the help. Before that I lived on my own after I graduated college, and actually passed up a really good paying job so I could be back home. I got put with a lot of responsibilities when I was a teenager, but I've become a lot more laid back as I've gotten older. I still don't feel like an adult though. I'm just a silly kid in a grown up body (I did develop more quickly though so I've been 5'8" since I was 12 and looked 18, but now I still look 18 and I'm 24...). Wearing professional looking clothes is weird. Having a day job is weird. But I have to do it, so I manage. As much as I like where I work, I'd rather wear hippie clothes and sit around and make jewelry and pet my cats all day instead.

~K

I've never actually felt grown up, im nearly 40 & still go the fair most weekends lol

I'll let you know when I do.

I'll be 21 soon. I haven't felt like an adult since 18, and I still don't.

I still feel 14 and I'm 58.

I've read that there's a general "rule" that an Aspie's developmental age is 2/3 their chronological age.

So that makes me about 27 instead of 41... ah okay

I felt like an adult at 10. I've always been hyperresponsible so people constantly told me about how mature and responsible I was.

Then again at various phases of my life and at different life landmarks. A big landmark was when I realized that my parents couldn't help me much anymore.

Now when other people started recognizing me as an adult was different. I was in college, so probably 16, then again around 24, and even more at about 30.

I'll be 50 next week and sometimes I still wonder. Sometimes I have the overwhelming feeling like I'm about to get in trouble for pretending, (and failing), to be an adult.

Since my childhood I’ve always thought there would be a moment when I start to think like an adult – or at least perceive the world differently. But for some reason I don’t think my perception changed that much.
I’ve always been waiting to toss my toys, lose interest in childish things and stop playing. I don’t know how this is with other adults but I cannot help but see myself as around 10 years old. Mentally that is. My bed is populated with stuffed animals which I treasure as much as my closest friends. They don’t have names – and never had – but something like a non-verbal identity concept and I would mourn the loss of any of them as deeply as if I lost a “real” friend. I take care to not make them unhappy and when I do have to put some in a storage box I try to make it as comfortable as I can.

I also still like toys, childish computer games (not exclusively, though) and I have to really restrain myself from poking interesting things with a stick, touching animals and flowers and run off to chase rabbits in a nearby field. Also, I still differentiate between myself and “adults”. I’m 27 now and I don’t think that will have changed by the time I'm 45. I'm always confused if someone addresses me as an adult.
I've been wondering if it's like that for everybody and others are just better “adjusted” or if everyone has to convince themselves not to stop and poke an interesting looking plant they found on the footpath or rescue an earthworm from the street in the rain. Do other (nt?) grown-ups just pretend not to laugh at funny sounding words repeating them to themselves..?

I don’t say that I still think like a child but my growing ability to grasp complex connections didn’t change my view of the world as much as I expected it to considering the behaviour of “normal” adults. Sometimes I think they must believe me mentally ret*d and if I’m bothered by that I don’t give in to the impulse to introduce myself to every plush animal in the toy department of the local department store. Or stop in a store and stroke a piece of clothing that is made of a funny fabric. Sometimes I don’t care. (There, “funny fabric” has a funny sound to it in itself. “Funny” is a funny word, anyway.)

If grown-ups see the world like I think they do it must be infinitely more boring. And if growing up is something that you have to do instead of something that just happens, I don’t want to do it.

My mother recently told me I already said that when I was eight years old...

(But according to the earlier post with the "general rule" about Aspie developmental levels my age would be 9, that seems about right...)

I really can't give a straight answer to this one. It's a gradual process that's still going on. I feel like I have elements of both adulthood (increasing) and elements of childhood (decreasing), but blurring into each other. And I feel there are arguments for and against whether I feel like an adult or not.

The most significant items that made me feel more like an adult are:

a) Independence - at the age of 21 when I had a full time permanent job, my own place to live etc.

This was a big change from university which I'd just graduated from, and where every other guy was recognising they were now men, and was recognised by others as a man. I however felt like a boy amongst men throughout uni.

b) Finding out I had Asperger's. I realised I had just developed differently from other people and was not necessarily behind other people and was therefore no less of a fully fledged adult.

Despite b), we've all heard the term "man child" and I sometimes feel like I am one, because of my emotional development which has so often been set back by traumatic events. When I experienced such an event as an adult (one which affirmed in a backhanded way my whole status as an adult) I was sent for Christian-based counselling. They felt that because of a serious assault I endured at the hands of my mother when I was 10, I was forever stuck at that age emotionally. The details of that assault would absolutely horrify you. This is one aspect where I have perhaps not moved beyond childhood.

I'm 60 and feel like a kid in an adult's body all the time.

But, I think being an adult is not about feeling, it is about taking responsibility for yourself and the circumstances at hand. An adult gets up to help. An adult doesn't wait for others to fix things. There is a Buddhist song for kids that says, "Be the host, not the guest." That about sums it up, in my view. If you feel like a kid but are helpful to the extent you are able, that is all that matters, IMHO.

I would say... I started feeling like an adult when I was 3. My mom was a teenage mess, and I was extremely caring and responsible...
Really ruined my childhood, looking back 26+ years later.

At almost 30 y/o I still *feel* I am exactly the person I was when I was 8...

You know what, with all the talk that Autism is a delay of parts of the brain growing/maturing I am not surprised at this feeling.
Some researchers suggest that an Autistic person of 30 years can still developmentally/emotionally have parts that are still newborn, 9 months old, 2 years old, etc....
Differs per person, like all aspects of Autism. But I feel this is true.

On the plus side, last year I read that new research suggests that so called mirror neurons appear to develop in Autistic people after age 30...

You wouldn't happen to have the link for that, would you? Thanks.

Originally I read it on nu.nl, but here's an English version I googled up just now:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 081159.htm

The link has some hopefull news:
""The finding of late developing circuit functions could be very important. One wonders whether the recent breakthroughs in the genetics of autism could help to identify causes for the developmental delays. This type of bridge might help to identify novel treatment mechanisms for autism," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry."

so I'm 14...wow, that's pretty much exactly how I feel actually

Thanks -- I really appreciate it. The title of the article is interesting, too: "Mirror Neuron System in Autism: Broken or Just Slowly Developing?"