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Grow up!

SimonSays

SimonSays

Van Dweller
V.I.P Member
Not too long ago somebody said to me they thought I ought to grow up, that maybe it was time. I wasn’t exactly sure what they meant. I do still feel like a child in many ways.

I’m 57 years old and if I haven’t grown up, according to her, I’m probably never going to. Maybe this is as grown-up as I get.

And this person wasn’t even neuro typical either, which made it all the more surprising. Because in many ways she is very similar to me. And what’s wrong with being a bit childlike anyway?

I’ve been called a man-child before. I’m not sure what being an adult even means? Responsibilities? We all have them. Talking as if I have everything figured out? No. Big ego? Insisting on getting my way? Entitled? No. If that’s what it means to be an adult then I’m quite happy to be who I am.
 
Three topics come to mind:

1) Seriousness
I've had some people tell me to "Grow up" because - as best as I can figure out - I'm having fun and they're not. It seems like a lot of people who think being an adult means being serious most of the time. I don't agree.

I think @Crossbreed recently mentioned (sorry - can't find the post - will look for it later) that neurodiverse people tend to have more neural plasticity. That means learning more later in life and I think it implies an affinity for childlike play later in life.

Please note that "childlike" is not the same as "childish". I can be just as happy as a child at discovering something new or enjoying a game, without being intellectually stunted.

2) Responsibility
I think being an adult means being responsible, as far as one can. I can hold down a job and take care of my needs, so I do so. I pay my bills, mow the lawn, vote, etc.

Really, this part of adulthood comes down to functioning. If you're functioning well enough on your own, then you're an adult to me.

3) Managing and Regulating Emotions
This is the part where I lack the most. An adult should be able to recognize and deal with their own emotions. Sadly, I think this is where most NT's lack the most, too.

For me, managing and regulating emotions means avoiding the circumstances that will lead to me melting down or behaving inappropriately. When the situation can't be avoided, then I have to mask until I can deal.
 
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I tend to think that when people say this, what they *really* mean is "fit in, become just like us". AKA, getting lumped in with that very rigid set of behavior that constitutes an "adult" to most people. Sit around like a doofus staring at a TV, drink a lot, talk about sports, go "socialize" in bars, argue/whine about politics... blah blah blah, knock out an elephant from sheer boredom with that junk.

I've heard this one a lot. My usual response is just to laugh a bunch.
 
Nervous Rex said:
1) Seriousness
I've had some people tell me to "Grow up" because - as best as I can figure out - I'm having fun and they're not. It seems like a lot of people who think being an adult means being serious most of the time. I don't agree.
Click to expand...
Yes. I remember as a kid, the adults around me were of the mindset that children should be seen and not heard. They were the grown ups, they were serious about knowing things. They would keep most things from me, but sometimes I heard some of their serious conversations. Their seriousness often stopped them seeing the better solution. I was a kid and sometimes I could’ve offered a perspective on it that was better than theirs. They never knew.
 
I have to live like an adult, but I don’t like it. I don’t like living in an NT world. I can do it, I have to. I’ve even held down jobs I couldn’t bare just to earn money. I’ve been doing this thing called being alive long enough. But honestly, if I could let it go I would. If I could live a simple life; chopping wood and carrying water. Grow food. Hunt. Make fire to cook. Live in a cabin. I would in a heartbeat.

The wonder of being in the present with nature. Watch the animals and sit amongst them.

when I lived alone in my van, I would often sit in the park on a bench. I sit very still and meditate sometimes. Every so often I open my eyes and am always delighted to see squirrels or birds being unafraid around me. I feel accepted by them and I like that feeling. They are so real, so who they are.
 
Nervous Rex said:
I think @Crossbreed recently mentioned (sorry - can't find the post - will look for it later) that neurodiverse people tend to have more neural plasticity.
Click to expand...
full
(That was HERE.) whisper
 
This may have nothing to do with what was said to you, or that specific context, but I know I feel a lot like telling people to 'grow up' lately. Mostly when I say it, I mean "take responsibility for yourself, and stop expecting everybody to solve all your problems" or "stop having an emotional meltdown over some minor thing that isn't worth melting down over, or can't be helped" - that one goes back to "stop expecting everyone to solve your problems for you". Also known as "the world doesn't revolve around you." I should mention, the two people I feel like saying most to are both NT (to my knowledge), and are both older than me. Neither are good at the emotional regulation thing, and/or like to 'play the victim'.

I totally get having an autistic meltdown because someone changed the position of a face cloth, or a shoelace broke, or ... you know, all those little things that can totally mess with our heads and our worlds, or even the bigger issues such as frustration at not being able to communicate, or inescapable sensory overload, etc. But 'being an adult' does mean taking responsibility for one's own life and problems, and being proactive about finding solutions to one's problems. (needing support to do so, or to learn how to do so is fine, as long as one is actually trying to learn) Not being able to find the necessary support to learn such things is a real barrier we face, and can complicate things.

A lot of NTs however want people to solve all their problems for them, without having to put any work in themselves. A number in this day and age feel entitled to well, everything, and 'right now'. which causes it's own problems (anti-maskers anybody?) and don't have even a little respect for anybody else or the fact that other people have the same rights they do.

...So, point being here, that can be what some people mean when they say 'grow up', but that may not have anything to do with your specific situation.

Edited to include: by "take responsibility" I mean own your own behaviour, and admit your mistakes, and not blame other people for your mistakes. In addition to what I said above about not 'playing the victim', and actually trying to solve your own problems - to the extent it is possible.
 
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I think 'growing up' is not something gained but something lost. One of the best ways to prevent it from happening is to periodically do the silly dance.

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tenor (2).gif


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;)
 
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SimonSays said:
I have to live like an adult, but I don’t like it. I don’t like living in an NT world. I can do it, I have to. I’ve even held down jobs I couldn’t bare just to earn money. I’ve been doing this thing called being alive long enough. But honestly, if I could let it go I would. If I could live a simple life; chopping wood and carrying water. Grow food. Hunt. Make fire to cook. Live in a cabin. I would in a heartbeat.

The wonder of being in the present with nature. Watch the animals and sit amongst them.

when I lived alone in my van, I would often sit in the park on a bench. I sit very still and meditate sometimes. Every so often I open my eyes and am always delighted to see squirrels or birds being unafraid around me. I feel accepted by them and I like that feeling. They are so real, so who they are.
Click to expand...

I am actually going to do this for real, live as a hermit and rely on nature to provide for me. I feel that since I can't function in the NT world that I should just leave it and live off nature as a hermit, alone with nature, which does not judge and condemn as humans do, nor does it destroy itself as humans destroy it.

Humans have utterly destroyed nature and then whine that they can't afford heavily processed "food" manufactured in laboratories instead of in nature. If they hadn't "subdued" and "civilized" nature, they would have had plenty of food.

I once read in a tabloid a "psychic healer" stating that animals accept healing energies without doubt, question, or rejection, unlike humans. Animals and plants accept kindness and reject cruelty, that is all they know. Humans are always analyzing and manipulating each other for "hidden" intents.

In nature, there is either creation or destruction. With humans, there is always something left unsaid that must be "inferred". Auties cannot do so.

It makes me wonder if there is some sort of recessive gene involved in autism that came from an unknown hominid, perhaps a gentler ape like P. robustus. Geneticists have already found non-H. sapiens genes in some African tribes. It is a fact that multiple Homo subspecies existed in different areas at the same time, and that there was interbreeding taking place. H. sapiens sapiens was simply the winner, possibly by wiping out other subspecies via genocide in some cases. Autism has features that are clearly antithetical to the genetic makeup of H. sapiens sapiens.
 
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They just say it as a slight. You can tell them, "Smarten Up!"
 
I think growing up is losing that sense of awe and wonder.
The amusement in the every day.

Giving serious consideration to periodically practising one of @Tom's suggested dances just because you can.
-although the second dance would likely put my worn joints in A&E, so perhaps not that one :)



It's possible I'm living my life back to front.
Quite a serious child. Old headed.
As I'm getting older I'm amused by the nonsensical and ridiculous...
... unless I can see it for what it is now? (not literal)

I can switch on adulting-mode when I need to.
I'm finding I need it less and less each time the earth makes another trip around the sun.
 
Life is too short to wear a suit and tie. There is no shame in wanting to be fifteen again, or whichever age of youth.
 
I'm as grown up as I'll ever be.
People always said I was never like a child anyway.
I understand why they thought that was because I didn't do many of the things a child does.
I, myself, would look at other kids, from toddlers to teens, and think a lot of the things they did
was silly.

Toddlers putting everything in their mouths and such stuff.
I didn't understand it. But, that's what you get when you're "born old" as some called me.

Also a right of passage into growing up that most think you must do is be like peers when you get
around puberty age. I just never fit into the groups others felt was so important to be accepted by.
It just didn't happen and had no desire or meaning to me.

As an adult, I think that is still what people mean when they say grow up.
Act in a manner and behaviour that is considered "adult."
There is the social order ideas again.
I can act the part, too. But, inside nothing really changes.
 
Yes, the pressure to be accepted and fit in and behave a certain way as if I am the same as the others when I know inside I’m not.

I remember being incredibly aware of myself when I was still young enough to be carried. But I had no way to articulate it, it was simply an awareness, a sense of knowing that I really did not have enough experience to understand and yet it all made sense to me as if my short time in this body was not all that I had been.
 
SimonSays said:
Yes, the pressure to be accepted and fit in and behave a certain way as if I am the same as the others when I know inside I’m not.

I remember being incredibly aware of myself when I was still young enough to be carried. But I had no way to articulate it, it was simply an awareness, a sense of knowing that I really did not have enough experience to understand and yet it all made sense to me as if my short time in this body was not all that I had been.
Click to expand...
I've posted on this very thing once before.
There are a few people who can remember back to birth. I'm one of them and I can remember feeling
very annoyed as a baby that could not talk yet, even though I knew what I wanted to say.
I knew about things I had never experienced yet in this body.

They say a fetus can start hearing before they are even born.
One of the things no one can explain is how I was born understanding English.
I wish I could find others who have memories like this, but, it seems impossible.
Remembering back to birth, yes. Being born understanding a language, no.
It would be very interesting to know if the idea of hearing while still en utero is a possibility.
But, I know there is more.
 
This is where I recognise I wasn’t able to sustain that sense of myself, as if I had come to experience their world and would have to find a way to fit in even though for the most part I never did. Perhaps that was the problem.

I was overly sensitive and being controlled by a dominating mother. If I didn’t do what she expected me to do, think or feel as she expected me to think or feel, she was able to emotionally hurt me, as if I had hurt her and she was making sure I knew that. It was devastating to feel the loss of her love when this took place.

I know she didn’t really know what she was doing, she was dealing with her own issues from her own upbringing with a dysfunctional family, nevertheless this is what happened and instead of being supported or even having what would turn out to be my autistic experiences recognised, I was forced into the idea she had of me. Who she expected me to be. Who she wanted me to be. And I wanted to please her because I wanted her love. She was my mother she was all there was for me as I didn’t have a father he wasn’t present. This caused tremendous issues throughout our life and I spent the vast majority of it not around her at all once I left home.

But I was there for her in the last months of her life. I was there for her when she died in fact I was the first person to see her. I went into her room, she looked like she had gone. I put one hand on her chest and one on her head and I’m sure I felt her heart beat once, and 20 minutes later she was cold. And it’s funny, when I was a kid she used to say to me ‘you will be there for me when I’m old’, ‘you will look after me won’t you?’ At the time I said of course but at the time I had no intention of being near her at all once I could leave home. Funny how things work out.
 
Growing doesn't mean losing anything, at all. We can still have all those good things.

If we understand what those people mean, we can look at it as an opportunity and not a slight. If we don't, well . . .

I've grown a lot since I've been in my 60s (and not just around the girth).

As to how: start writing poems. Learn a new subject or an old one you were told to drop at school. Read novels: Twain, Mazo de la Roche.

I don't do engineering as I've always been fumbly in the fingers. But I love the information and pictures on aeroplane or engine web pages.

Listen to music - Haydn and Brahms have funky harmonies and rhythms. Set Alexander Pope's poems to music in the style of Madeleine Peyroux or John Fogerty (I can't!)

Be around animals and plants (if you dare). Marvel how our brains swing into wakefulness as our patch of earth swings into daylight.

Are you using your visual thinking well enough? Do you love words? Have you got shelves? Do you arrange stuff harmoniously as to size and alignment (easier to find)?

While we are thus diverted from the intense, we can muse about others' growth and that will take the heat off us. Discoverers and explorers. Since I found out I have ASC I find the writings of Donna Williams (and many others with ASC, some of whom have their own web pages) give me interesting ideas or ring familiar bells, or "pull my empathy strings" hahaha! ;):cool::rolleyes:o_O

A tidy enough life has times for things. I like to multitask as I have the space for it, then I can maintain variety.

Don't worry - real growth of some sort is inevitable unless you prevent it. If others don't see it, they don't see it.
 
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