this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
192 points (99.0% liked)
Asklemmy
54551 readers
362 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have spoken to many many elderly people that either act like petulant children or they say that inside they really don’t feel like they have a different mind than when they were children/late adolescents. The truth is you are projecting largely outdated social signifiers for adulthood onto yourself. It sounds like the real problem is that you are struggling financially and asking your parents for assistance feels infantilizing but its the exact sort of thing that gave them “adulthood” (TM)...
Sure, having kids and getting married can confirm you are an adult- but honestly, having children connected me more closely with my childhood and brought back memories from childhood I thought had disappeared. It also gave me more insight into my own parents, for better or worse. Does that make me more of an adult or more of a child? considering that when I was childless and dating people I was only concerned with other adults in my life and having fun with them- and now I am putting myself in my childrens shoes and my relationship to my parents is evolving in ways it hadn’t for decades? idk if you really wanted any advice, but I guess my advice would be to worry less about measuring your life and self worth against others, and worry more about your aspirations and your community.