When do you become an adult?

TheCatWoman said:

Should we hold someone back from doing "adult" things because they're not 18 even when they're ready?

If we hold back people from being capable of being an adult until later and later in the name of protecting them, then we are delaying their ability to become adults - essentially creating generations of tweenagers who are being held back until later and later.

I started working when I was 15, was seriously considering getting married at 16 (not that rare an occurrance in Scotland in the 1980s) and was off to University at 17 to a few years of drinking, sexual experimentation and all sorts of things that are denied to people these days by law.

I'm a firm believer that the blanket rules are suffocating and restrict your personal freedoms.

If the person if not mature enough at 17 to be treated as an adult then the education system and parents are failing their children in teaching them life skills and the right mindset to mature.

Labour are pushing for 16 year olds to be treated as adults and vote - is this a cynical ploy to harvest votes from impressionable and vulnerable children or them acknowledging that they should be treated as adults?

Iain said:

If the person if not mature enough at 17 to be treated as an adult then the education system and parents are failing their children in teaching them life skills and the right mindset to mature.

Nearly 50 years on  from  knowing I couldn't  cope with the non academic side of uni life I've got better, but still struggle with day to day practical things  that many others take in their stride. The educational system in the early 1960s to mid 1970s wasn't equipped to do the best for children and teenagers like me. Thankfully it's a lot better nowadays for such children and teenagers, though still far from perfect.

Even now much of the psychiatric system has a mindset that thinks if you can do x well , then automatically you can do y well. Failure to do so gets you branded as having a 'character defect'. You don't get much needed help and support, because it assumed, quite wrongly, that you don't need it.

It took till I was 60, thanks to intervention by my daughter, for long held false beliefs about me  to be demolished. Unfortunately its too late to fix the damage  that was caused.  For peace of mind I have to live with as things are, rather than how they should've been.

I'm not sure many here can understand a person like me. The vast majority of the population very probably doesn't.

Unknown said:

The educational system in the early 1960s to mid 1970s wasn't equipped to do the best for children and teenagers like me. Thankfully it's a lot better nowadays for such children and teenagers, though still far from perfect.

I agree. The education system now is much more accommodating for those with different needs such as yourself.

With the 98% of the population who are not with our needs I feel that they are now being coddled and shielded too much so that when they come to leave school they are chewed up and spat out in the working world and lack the training to be able to adapt and cope.

I have an uncle who is a former headmaster (long serving) and he shares this view. He suggested that any training for pupils in "real world" skills would not be approved by a lot of parents in case it traumatised their kids.

I'm lucky in that I have scope to give this sort of education to a handful of autistic teens who are approaching school leaving age here and their parents want them to be prepared for the outside word. Here in Brazil there is way more prejudice against autism so I help the kids know what to expect, teach them some comeback lines to use (this needs a lot of repetition to make it always available), how to be assertive and how to know when to walk away amongst other things.

This is something I really wish I had growing up as it allows you to co-exist with neurotypicals and advocate for your needs. As you can imagine this is a stretch for teenagers but role playing this again and again until they can script it has proven very effective.

A lot depends on the level of capability of the person so the approach has to be tailored to each individual and I have the time to do this luckily.

OK.  So you clearly tried to post this, originally, 2 days ago.

I very strongly suspect that it was "caught and held, automatically" by the automated "spam-bot killer / needs-checking-by-a-human software" because it includes 3 links to other web sites.

What I mean by this is.....there are 3 separate areas of text in your post that, if you 'click' on those parts, you are taken to those websites from which you had copied the text.

This technique is used by commercial spam bots....so this is why you post was delayed.  Our volunteer moderators don't normally work at the weekends....hence the 2 day delay in your post appearing.

I hope this explanation helps reassure you that WHAT you wrote was fine.

Have a good Monday firemonkey.

Yours

Number.

No one. It was pointed out that it's a forum glitch ,and has happened to quite a lot of other posters.

Who or what accused you of spamming? Thats horrible, I think being falsly accused of wrong doing is a trigger for all of us, but some more so than others.

Yes!

Limited budget, probably.

Tried again . Accused of spamming again. From what I can make out, it's a longstanding problem. Which raises the question as to why the NAS  hasn't bothered to sort the problem out.

Trying again

I concur with Number. Anyone can get a post removed for spamming. It happened to me - I contested it and it was put back without explanation. Since then I found out that it's automatic and nothing to do with you. Over-sensitive computers. There are some triggers that people have pointed out - but I can't remember what they are.

Firemonkey, rest assured that the mechanics of this forum are truly rubbish.  Please do not assume that you have been targeted for anything in particular that you have written or done within one of your posts to result in it being "pulled" by the system.

About a year ago, I experimented with how/why posts get pulled by the system.  It is pretty laughable, and often has no relationship to what you have "said" in your post.  When I started to "unpick" and "report to all" about what I had discovered, I was asked NOT to report to the masses....which is not unreasonable.....because "publishing" such information would/could then allow the "nasty folk" to exploit the systems.

Please, just rest assured, that the system is simply rubbish - but probably well intentioned.

I tried replying to you but got accused of spamming. Apparently mentioning that I was mostly working in an industrial therapy unit during my last psych stay , and giving a Copilot description of such, is unacceptable. I now can find no way of challenging the decision. Being falsely accused of doing wrong is a major trigger for me due to an experience whilst at prep school.

I wasn't in psych hospital because of that. That was just one of the things they had me do while in there. Most of the time  they had me working in the industrial therapy unit.

Via Copilot

What a horrible experience for you and how stupid to put someone in an instistution for. My Mum would probably have been along side you, she can peel potatoes, but only with one sort of peeler, she cannot get her head around using a different type, it's like her eyes take in the information, but it doesn't get through to her brain and to her hands. I'm like that with tech.

What a horrible experience for you and how stupid to put someone in an instistution for. My Mum would probably have been along side you, she can peel potatoes, but only with one sort of peeler, she cannot get her head around using a different type, it's like her eyes take in the information, but it doesn't get through to her brain and to her hands. I'm like that with tech.

OK.  So you clearly tried to post this, originally, 2 days ago.

I very strongly suspect that it was "caught and held, automatically" by the automated "spam-bot killer / needs-checking-by-a-human software" because it includes 3 links to other web sites.

What I mean by this is.....there are 3 separate areas of text in your post that, if you 'click' on those parts, you are taken to those websites from which you had copied the text.

This technique is used by commercial spam bots....so this is why you post was delayed.  Our volunteer moderators don't normally work at the weekends....hence the 2 day delay in your post appearing.

I hope this explanation helps reassure you that WHAT you wrote was fine.

Have a good Monday firemonkey.

Yours

Number.

No one. It was pointed out that it's a forum glitch ,and has happened to quite a lot of other posters.

Who or what accused you of spamming? Thats horrible, I think being falsly accused of wrong doing is a trigger for all of us, but some more so than others.

Yes!

Limited budget, probably.

Tried again . Accused of spamming again. From what I can make out, it's a longstanding problem. Which raises the question as to why the NAS  hasn't bothered to sort the problem out.

Trying again

I concur with Number. Anyone can get a post removed for spamming. It happened to me - I contested it and it was put back without explanation. Since then I found out that it's automatic and nothing to do with you. Over-sensitive computers. There are some triggers that people have pointed out - but I can't remember what they are.

Firemonkey, rest assured that the mechanics of this forum are truly rubbish.  Please do not assume that you have been targeted for anything in particular that you have written or done within one of your posts to result in it being "pulled" by the system.

About a year ago, I experimented with how/why posts get pulled by the system.  It is pretty laughable, and often has no relationship to what you have "said" in your post.  When I started to "unpick" and "report to all" about what I had discovered, I was asked NOT to report to the masses....which is not unreasonable.....because "publishing" such information would/could then allow the "nasty folk" to exploit the systems.

Please, just rest assured, that the system is simply rubbish - but probably well intentioned.

I tried replying to you but got accused of spamming. Apparently mentioning that I was mostly working in an industrial therapy unit during my last psych stay , and giving a Copilot description of such, is unacceptable. I now can find no way of challenging the decision. Being falsely accused of doing wrong is a major trigger for me due to an experience whilst at prep school.

I wasn't in psych hospital because of that. That was just one of the things they had me do while in there. Most of the time  they had me working in the industrial therapy unit.

Via Copilot