When did you realize you were a grown up?

Question

When did you realize you were a grown up? Did something happen to affect you? Was it a change in mentality? In behavior? Or just a new awareness?

Answer 1

Oh I love this question!!!

I definitely had a "moment" when I knew I was a grownup!!

It was about a week after my first son was born, and it was the first time I'd been left alone with him. (I'd had a difficult labor, c-section, and we lived out in the country.)

I decided that once I got the baby down for a nap, I'd run a load of his clothes through the wash. So I verrrrrrrrryyyyy carefully carried this little basket on my right hip (avoiding contact with sensitive tummy), and holding onto the railing with my left hand, I made my way down to the dungeon, I mean basement laundry room.

When I got to the bottom of the steps, I saw 3 baby mice burrowing into a thick rug we had at the bottom of the steps. Apparently they'd been into the poison and were instinctively looking for water. Anyhoo, in my narcotic-induced stupor, I was imagining them to be gigantic rats like in "Lady and the Tramp"! So I threw down the laundry basket (I would later regret that...), and picked up a broom and proceeded to whack the dickens out of those already half-dead baby mice. And I believe I was yelling, "You're not going to eat MY baby!" Or maybe I was just thinking it. Really loud.

Of course, all this throwing and whacking really, REALLY HURT my belly!! So I sat down on the steps and cried and cried, and I said, "I want my Mommmmmmmm!" And then I started thinking, "Oh! I AM the Mom! I am the one who will have to be the killer of spiders, the solver of problems, and in this case, the one to pick up all this laundry off the basement floor when my belly already hurts!"

So that was my "Hey I'm a grownup now" moment! :)

Answer 2

I'm 26, am married,I have a 6 year old, I've just got a great new job and left home 9 years ago, I live in the suburbs in a 3 bed semi and I have to do things like pay my bills...

Does that make me a grown up because I don't feel like i've got there yet????

Answer 3

When my last grandparent died I realized that now MY parents are the grandparents and looking at them in that light made me realize how much of a grown-up I am. I think small things make me realize it as well - like planning a meal or a family get-together...things the "grown-ups" used to do but now I do.

Being introduced as an "Aunt"

and I think one time I actually made my niece do something "because I said so..."

Answer 4

Not TRULY until I was about 32.......when I finally made some choices that were right for me and had the guts to tell my parents this, even though I knew they wouldn't approve. Turned out, they knew i was a grown up too and supported my decisions without any lectures or disapproval. My life has turned out very happy because of those choices and it helped to have their approval, but also helped me just knowing that I didnt' "need" their approval anyway.

Answer 5

Dont think i ever will.. fully.
But i remember when i was 11 years old.. playing spotlight (like go home stay home in the dark with a torch).. and i swore i would never be like my parents watching tv....
But now i prefer to watch tv than run around outside.. so i guess.. i am grown up.. haha..
BUt im really still a kid at heart in a lot of ways

Answer 6

I made a resolution thirty years ago that I would only grow up selectivly. While I had children and a job and responsibility, I still climb trees, paint on the wall, act silly and pay attention to whats going on around me and ask questions. The last two are essential to childishness. Try it, it's fun to just pay attention and really look around at what you think you already know.

Answer 7

When i had responsibilities, but having said that it is so easy for grown ups to somewhat revert back to childish ways. I also think that the growing process is forever changing with time, and especially through experiences in life doing things we find hard in life also helps us to grow up, and so does making decisions.

Answer 8

It's very simple: 1. a BOY is a man as soon as his voice is significantly lower than mine (me being a woman) and 2. a GIRL is a woman as soon as she has her 1st period. Naturally, males tend to have longer childhoods than do females since they exit boyhood at the average age of 14 while most females are "grown" before they even reach 13. Sexual maturity is everything to me because children don't have children in my book. Deep-voiced adolescent boys are usually capable of producing sperm while most menstruating adolescent girls are ovulating every month.

Answer 9

LOL..it wasnt too long ago actually...my fiance and I were at home and all the kids were running around going inside and outside of the house...and I looked at him and said "when did this happen?" I meant this...the mortgage, the kids, etc....I still feel like a big kid and so does he...

A comic (I dont know who) once asked..."how do you know when you are a grown up?"...the answer? "when you can drive past a field of cows and not go MOOOOOOO."

Answer 10

I knew that I was grown up when I was 21, and leaving the hospital after having my daughter and they gave me her discharge papers and it said "Parent signature". I remember looking around for MY mom and then being SHOCKED to realize they meant me!
Death of childhood right there