What makes us children?

[Lanfear57]

Besides age of course. Age really has nothing to do with being a child or not. There are those people who will be Children all their lives, and some legal minors who are nowhere near Child-like.
So, what really makes us Children?

[Ultrawolf]

[Ming]

At the same time, nothing says that you really have to "grow up". There are a lot of things that I still do, even though I'm 23, that some would say are child-like. I still play video games, I play Magic, I watch cartoons, I listen to certain kinds of music, I buy toys all the time, etc. And yet, I'm probably one of the most mature and responsible people that I know, and I'm sure that a lot of people who know me can verify that statement.

Growing up doesn't mean the same things that it did years ago, when our parents "grew up". Just because I'm an adult doesn't mean that I have to act serious all the time. To me, growing up means knowing when is the appropriate time to act in a certain way, and it's knowing when it's time to be responsible. For example, it's knowing that when I go on a job interview for a career type job (or when I get that job and go to work), I have to dress nice, and be as professional as I can be. But at the same time, when it's "me" time I will almost always choose to watch Adult Swim over the news and to read comic books over the Financial Times, and no one can take those pleasures away from me.

So in reality, "growing up" is all the way your outlook on life describes it. I may be 23 now, but I'll always be a little kid inside.

[Blackmage]

I agree with Ming, growing up is knowing when to act certain ways. Playing around is good and fun and all but sometimes inappropriate, where as being a fuddy duddy like Shino isn't all that great either.

[Silver Adept]

What makes us children? Most often, the outlook we have on life. But there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with a childlike viewpoint. At times, it's actually very beneficial. Maturity may very well be knowing when to apply childlike thinking to a situation.

[Therin]

A child asks someone else.
An adult is someone who's figured it out on his own.

[Lanfear57]

i think we start being adults when we realize that the world is made up of a bunch of smaller worlds with those different rules, and that sometimes the different worlds can't come into contact with each other or pain is going to happen.
Thats when we learn how to hide things, and we lose our innocence. i think being a child is about innocence, whether or not that inniocence is connected with experience. people so often assume innocence is connected with sex but it isnt.
its connected with knowing how to hide things so people don't get hurt, but even then sometimes people still get hurt and its not fair, cuz once you realize that things cant work out existing together, but they both have to exist, you then have to deal with it somehow and they usually cant be hidden forever.

[Girkon]

hehe another part of being an adult is knowing when you can ask someone for help. An old proverb comes to mind, no man is an island.

[Zzyxx]

hmmmm...
I'm gonna go along the same lines as Ming. I think that maturity has everything to do with age. I mean, i'm only 19 but most days i feel closer to 40. Not because i'm in bad health, but because i see so much and understand what it means both for myself and for others. It's a humbling and somwhat saddening thing to see life as it is rather than as it could be.

[ScrumYummy]