This is something that's been coming up a lot with family members and it reminds me of the time when I was a teenager, too. A couple relatives of mine are 15 and 17, and they both get equally annoyed with people treating them like and calling them children. And I'm with them on that, some people are way more mature than others. And people really shouldn't assume things like that about others, imo. And it is odd that people have to repeat that they think teenagers are children so often, as if to convince themselves.

When I was in high school, I was very mature for my age. But even considering that, people - especially teachers - belittled me like I was a child simply because of my age. And I think society has gotten way too anal retentive about what a child actually is. And it really is becoming a problem. I won't still be treating my son or daughter like children when they are 16 years old. That won't prepare them for the real world. And i think that's a big part of why so many people either stay with their parents up to something like 26 years old or end up in poverty today. Their parents sheltered them too much.

A lot of it I think stems from ignorance of the neuroscience of brain development. It seems people genuinely believe that once we become children the brain doesn't go through any changes until we're 18 when it magically shifts to adult mode. The brain actually undergoes a lot of different changes as we age. Sure, the brain isn't fully settled until about 25 yrs old. But a 16 year old's brain is far more developed than that of a 12 year old, let alone a 7 year old, (which is the age of an actual child btw). When a child enters adolescence, the brain actually goes through a series of major changes, so even adolescents have brains nothing like a child's.

And really, there's a reason the age-of-consent is 16. Some parents can raise their children to be more mature and independent than their peers, so if the parents think they are sufficiently mature, they can legally allow them to make more mature decisions. And you can also be emancipated at 16 for the same reason. A lot of thought must go into it before allowing your 16 year old to become fully independent, but it is still up to the parents' discretion to do so if they think their teenager is ready for the next stage of life.

I think society is getting too sterile with everything, but I also think laziness is part of the issue. Only parents who properly raise their children can produce fully independent teenagers. But it takes a lot of attention, competence, and wisdom to do so. Maybe some qualities many people don't strive for. So it's easier to think of your teenager as your little baby. And when people think of a teenager, they almost always think of children. And that's pretty much a stigma that no one wants to address because it's much easier to treat everything under 18 years old as a little child rather than to encourage them and treat them with humility.

It's true, times are not nearly as tough as they used to be and there's less incentive to be ready for the world earlier in life, but independence still isn't a bad thing. And some people are more ready for it than others. We're not all the same, after all. And for me, and really my husband too, we want our children to surpass us and we want them to aim high. We made it this far in human history because we raised children to have direction and to aim higher than their parents. But I do think that's another issue. Some parents out there may not want their children to surpass them or to become independent. Carl Jung once said that when you don't know someone's motivation for doing something, you look at the end result and infer the motivation. Awful lot of people not moving from their parents' homes and/or don't move far. So maybe a lot of parents don't want their children to grow up, they want them to be their little babies forever. But even then, that doesn't mean other people's children didn't grow up while theirs was overprotected at home all their lives.

I think people should stop treating adolescents and teenagers like they're children, especially ones that aren't their own.