Posted on 09/25/2013 7:19:04 PM PDT by chessplayer
By the time I was 25, I had put in four years in the military, had my own job, apartment, in a town 100 miles completly separate from my folks ever since I was 19 and on my own.
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At 23 I got my honorable discharge after 6 years of reserve and active duty. Had been married for 2 years and a one year old daughter.
Ruy... I also agree with your comment about how ridiculous it is for 26 y/o “children” to be carried on their parents’ health insurance. If kids aren’t taught or forced to be responsible before age 25, it’s unlikely they will be successful later in life.
My wife and I got married at 19 and 18, respectively and already had a child. By 25, I had been in the Marine Corps for seven years, had TWO children (a third on the way) and had seen combat - TWICE! We have been married for 26 years.
The problem isn’t the age! The problem is the parenting!
“Kids” will remain “kids” as long as their parents treat them as children. Age has very little to do with maturity and knowledge.
I told all four of my kids that my job was to turn them into self-reliant, fully-functioning contributors to society by the time they turned 18.
Unfortunately, in this new age, self-esteem, find yourself at your own pace (on mommy & daddy’s dollar) is KILLING America!
“Kids” will remain “kids” as long as their parents treat them as children. Age has very little to do with maturity and knowledge.
I told all four of my kids that my job was to turn them into self-reliant, fully-functioning contributors to society by the time they turned 18.
You and I think alike my friend!
Could this have anything to do with kids up to 26 years old can stay on their parents’ insurance?
I read something funny today. Some woman said she was happy because her 26 year old son can be on her insurance. I guess she thinks he’s going to stay 26 forever.
Richard Bong was a major at age 24. Brig. Gen Harrison Thyng was a colonel at age 26.
During the Battle of the Bulge, 2nd Lt. Lyle Balk, a platoon leader was a youthful 20 years old.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2428002/posts
Who gets to give such a directive?
Are child psychologists under-employed?
Insufferably stuffy BBC can stuff it!
How about we abolish the job classification and leave the definition of child psychologist to whichever potential clients of same have the wherewithal to pay for same?
Screw the ones who got certified and licensed! We don't need that! We never needed that! Let them compete on reputation alone!
I believe the secret may be work.
Todays kids do not work.
My father had 3 jobs ,one of them was we had a small farm. Raised tobacco. It’s not an easy life and all hands in the family chip in for the work. There isn’t time for Video games, even if they had existed. At ten I was driving the tractor plowing and cultivating. My mother wouldn’t let me use the disc. LOL, But I was brought up working, with a mother at home, not raised by some baby sitter.
Many of todays kids have no jobs, do no work, have no mother at home and are left to fend for themselves all day.
I was taught not to buy unless I had the money. I graduated High School at 17 an went in the National Guard, I had no desire to be drafted after I had worked for several years and I wanted to get my military duty done with and get back home. I did my 8 years with the guard. Drills and weekends.
Got called back from my honeymoon when the Leroy’s rioted in Cambridge , Md. Not much of a military career, but it sufficed.
I think maybe todays kids do not have to worry about the draft or having to serve, They don’t work, Momma hands them everything ,and they expect more.6 months in a military organization would do them no harm and they would grow up a lot faster than going to college, getting drunk, and screwing any girls they can find who aren,t lesbians.
During the Battle of the Bulge, 2nd Lt. Lyle Balk, a platoon leader was a youthful 20 years old.
One of my grand fathers served in the light dragoon in the American Revolution, he was 12 years old at the time.
No, in fact I am very unhappy about the state of the union since a “gay” clown took over. I am actually old enough to remember when a gay party meant that everyone was having fun. I suppose it still does in a perverted way. I remember dating a woman who referred to herself as “a gay divorcee”, believe me she was no lesbian.
I was serious about what I said though, in South Carolina in the sixties if you were a male older than 22 and single you were considered to be out of step with society. I was 23 and working in a manufacturing engineering office at a factory when they hired a secretary who was probably close to sixty and looked like a Miss America contestant from the neck down. She was a nice, friendly, married woman and she wanted to get to know everyone in her new workspace so she asked questions. She asked me how many children I had and I said none. She then asked me why not. I replied that I thought I should be married first (this was the sixties, it was nothing like now). She got a shocked look and asked me why I wasn’t married and how old was I! I replied that I was 23. She actually came back with, “Twenty three and you’re not married yet, what’s wrong with you?” No one seemed to think that it was a rude question to ask of a young man. I had one male coworker at the time who was twenty two and had already been DIVORCED twice! Another was twenty two with a wife (who was runnning around on him) and two children. We were all high school graduates, no college (unless you count my Navy electronics) and earning enough to make our own way in the world, very few of that age that I meet now are anything more than overgrown children.
It occurs to me that if there were to be a situation comedy series based on what life was REALLY like for us back then no one who is under forty now would believe any of it.
At 14 I DREAMED of having a tractor, I was an old hand on the farm by then but I started out walking behind a draft horse at around ten. When the horse died he was replaced with two mules, one for my older brother and one for me. We were cutting big oak trees for firewood with a five and a half foot crosscut saw by the time I was in the fifth grade. I started using an axe as soon as I could lift one.
>>It occurs to me that if there were to be a situation comedy series based on what life was REALLY like for us back then no one who is under forty now would believe any of it.<<
A real “That 70s (or 60s) show” is a great idea.
Of course the problem is the longer you wait to make them adults the longer it takes them to be adults. There’s a long list of life items, each a part of the concept we call adulthood, that you’re really never ready to do until you do it for a couple of years. Nothing but holding down a job can teach you to hold down a job. Nothing but being married can prepare you for marriage. Nobody can rear a child until they do. So you’ll never really be ready to be an adult until you’ve been one for two years, if we make you do it at 18 you should be ready by 21; if we don’t make you do it until 26...
YES! I totally agree with this!, I believe that kids at 18 are not yet mature enough to be considered adults, because most of them are still kids!!!, and I think a lot of this has to do with the frontal lobe of the brain being not fully developed yet!!!!!!. Now I think child psychologists should also consider another group for 25 - 32, because in other studies the frontal lobe of the brain is still developing past 25, until the early 30’s, about 32 sounds right!.
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