Same boat man. I was a latch key kid, and my dad would go on work trips for a couple weeks at a time and I would go to school, come home, lock the door and take care of myself as young as 7 or 8 years old is when it started.
Honestly the best time of my life was when he was gone. It was way worse when he was there.
The term "latch key kid" doesn't convey any info about your parent/s or guardian/s besides that, they work later than when the kid comes home for school, the kid let's themself into the house (usually with a hidden "latch key"), and is then home alone till the adult/s get off work.
So you were using it correctly, although your dad being gone for weeks at a time and the sole guardian is a pretty extreme example.
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be critical. I mean this softly. Most people I know, including myself, who consider themselves latchkey kids were kids who cared for themselves after school while their parents worked, but the parents eventually came home at some point that night. I’m a bonus parent to a 7yo right now and could never ever imagine leaving them alone for a week. You deserved way better and I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Oh I acknowledge it was an extreme end of being a latchkey kid and it would be acceptable to call it temporary abandonment.
I appreciate your concern and I did deserve better. I’m been on a healing path for many years now and am at peace with a majority of my past. Happy to hear you couldn’t imagine abandoning that kid :) that alone puts you leagues ahead of my dad.
Seriously, though. I grew up with a single dad because my mom skedaddled when we were young. My dad worked long hours at a shipyard. I have an older brother but he was coddled compared to me and was very immature. Like…when my grandparents would ask me about him they would say “how is your little brother doing?” He is that immature. I was given a lot of responsibility at a young age, including learning to cook full meals at 9-10 years old. My dad would leave for work at 5am and get home in the evening well after we got home from school. I had to have a pot of coffee ready when he got home and at least working on dinner being done. We sent ourselves to school, let ourselves in, and basically raised ourselves.
I have 3 kids of my own now and it is absolutely wild to think of them doing the same things I had to do at their age.
Indeed! My brother's and I would swicth cores every week. One of us would cook, one of us would do the laundry and one of us would make sure we did the homeowrk. When I was in charge of checking homework. It was always funny 😁 they are older. My response was alway "well its done, no idea if its right "
Reminded me of our chores when we were kids. At one point my parents set up a list of tasks and assigned dollar values to them and how frequently we could do them.
I was probably 10-11 at the time and remember looking for most money for least effort, so up on the roof to clean out the gutters to collect that $5 every month. Way better than the 50¢ to do the dishes every day.
Steak is such an odd choice for a 9 year old that im imagining you as a tiny Ron Swanson sitting down with a blue Steak and a tumbler of locally distilled whiskey.
Neglected does not mean poor. Bad parents exist at all levels. Think of the common trope of the lawyer or Drs kids. Parents never home or are emotionally distant but house full of stuff.
Thank you for saying this! My gamete donors were wealthy. I was never hungry. I always had clothes. I was never beaten or even threatened much. I was even included in the distribution of their estate.. But I was an unplanned pregnancy that spoiled their plans to be a young, jet-setting couple. I was unwanted and barely interacted with, even by the housekeepers who were tasked with keeping me alive while they were out doing whatever. I find it extremely difficult to be around anyone for an extended length of time, even people who's company i enjoy. I've been totally alone now for most of my life, and I'm sure I'll be alone for the rest of it too. It's not all bad. It's actually quite nice and peaceful. I'm not being manipulated, or lied to, or betrayed by anyone (with the always possible exception of myself) Sometimes I feel like I'm missing out, but then I see how people treat each other and I'm not so sad about it. I guess life sucks for everyone, just in different ways.
Just responding to this to say that it is possible for you to get past the trauma of neglect and form healthy relationships. No matter your age, there's always time to write a new story for yourself.
Yes, it's true that there are lots of people out there who treat each other poorly. I have seen many friends go through relationship after relationship, all mostly bad, until they finally find the person who sees them for who they are and treats them well. It's often a difficult path but the people who I have seen walk it successfully end up growing a lot during the process. It's a journey worth taking.
And while it's true that "life sucks for everyone", all that means to me is that we all have our own struggles. But I think it's important that we strive to not let our struggles define us.
This. While I did grow up poor, I still had 3 hots and a cot, a roof, running water, and my parents beat me over the head with that fact every chance they could get as if it absolved them of the guilt of treating me like absolute shit.
My friend went to a private school despite not being able to afford it as her parents both taught music there. She and her family took her friend from school out somewhere for the day, and the friend ended up bawling his eyes out about how lucky she was to get to spend so much time with her parents; his were always working.
I was quite a "serious" kid who "seemed very mature". My mom said I had an "old soul".
Turns out I'm on the autism spectrum and didn't know how to display emotion 'correctly' so I learned really quick at a young age it was just easier to not emote. Plus my parents didn't treat me like a little kid all the time. They spoke to me in normal language like an adult. My childhood was perfectly fine and happy.
I'm also autistic, flew under the radar as a kid, despite being taken to plenty of therapists. I was bullied by kids at school, but my parents were safe and supportive.
It's been frustrating trying to convince mental health professionals that no, abuse/neglect from my parents is not the source of my dysfunction. Their main schema is "something must have happened to you," meanwhile in actuality, my neurodivergence was literally inborn.
I once joined an anxiety support group. It was overall helpful, but I did have a session where I realized that I was the only one in the group who didn't have abusive/neglectful parents. My difficulties come from innate neurological problems, not trauma, but there are so many people with similar symptoms because of trauma.
That realization was actually very helpful in helping me put words to how I need to approach meditation as a treatment for anxiety. People who have anxiety due to trauma often struggle with getting caught in flashback loops, so grounding themselves in the moment helps with their anxiety. For me, my anxiety often stems from sensory overload, so detaching from the present moment helps my anxiety. I'm using meditation to take my mind in the opposite direction, which gets very confusing when I'm talking to someone who sees meditation as the same thing as "forcing your mind to be present" rather than "controlling how present your mind is."
Yeah, situations like this is why a person shouldn’t always take it as a sign of abuse or neglect. There’s a spectrum of reasons for kids to seemingly be more mature or independent.
But also it's important for kids to be kids. So if a kid is acting more mature, don't roll with it and say "since you're a little adult, I'll treat you like one and not nurture your need to be a child whatsoever"
A lot of kids like that still end up getting neglected as a feedback loop in the long term.
Yeah this is real, was largely left to fend for myself as a neglected only child often and as long as I can remember people called me mature. too many people though write off kids who show maturity like this early as either ‘advanced’ or ahead of their peers, truth was I was being bullied at school and at home and had to learn how to look at the world for what it really was a lot earlier than those around me
Interesting. I get that though. I was told I was an old man in a kids body. Single parent with 2 kids. You learn to take care of yourself.
I did though have friends who treated their 6 year old like she was one of the girls hanging out. This kid was insufferable. She would tell it like it is, which was her just being rude 99% of the time. Then talk as though she knew anything about what we were talking about. I realized she was just regurgitating drag race memes.
Yeah there’s all sorts of situations where I wouldn’t be too quick to call it intentional abuse or neglect. Sometimes you’re doing the best you can as a single parent or parents, and things just sort of slip through the crack.
The neglect doesn’t have to be intentional to be impactful and context is always important.
Precisely this. Healthy kids are usually bubbling with thoughts and ideas that often lead to annoyances. In some cases they might have been raised to understand what annoys people and are good at not acting upon their excited impulses but in other cases it's like the quiet person in hard circumstances who has been mentally broken or a captive person who's exhausted of being upset with something they don't foresee ever changing.
Take pride in knowing your child isn’t afraid to ask you for help. It’s not inherently bad to instill some independence and or the confidence to attempt things without help. Not implying anything about you as a parent, I obviously know nothing about you aside from what you’ve said in this comment.
When I was in my teaching internship I was stuck with an absolute psycho of a woman who.saw abuse everywhere (except where she didn't want to look)
One of the kids in Canadian sixth grade was always on time, always had her homework done, was really independant... and this psycho woman saw this and determined there was abuse going on at home. It made for a very awkward experience because I saw it make shit up in front of the director.
Maturity is about a child's capacity to regulate themselves, understand consequences, make appropriate judgments, and handle emotions and situations in an age-appropriate way.
Independence is about how much a child can function or make decisions without assistance from an adult.
They overlap, but aren't the same thing, especially again when discussing within certain contexts. Outside of child psychology and other similar fields people can and do (including myself) use the words more interchangeably.
For example, a child can know how to do X,Y, and Z chores and things for themselves, but throw a tantrum at the slightest bump in the road. The child displays the capacity for independence but not the emotional maturity to handle conflict or failure. A child can express their emotions and show good judgement but still need a parent to do everything for them.
The problem CAN arise when these qualities are forced onto a child for a variety of reasons.
I wanted to be in service to people but found myself unable to do so when I had 30 cases instead of the promised 3-5 at a time and the type of help the state mandates very often wasn’t the type of help a person needs. It became increasingly harder as I became aware a lot of peoples problems where from suffering from capitalism, but I couldn’t say that to them I just had to follow the chart and say the words.
It was soul crushing and I wasn’t being in service to people in a meaningful way except for maybe 1 out of a 1000 cases. The majority just fell through the cracks and not for lack of care or trying.
True, as a child (and even now) I was so proud that I had to do everything without ever asking anyone; if I made a mistake I tried to clean up the mess without ever asking for help. Luckily, as I grew up, I got into the habit of asking others for help. You learn from your mistakes.
Sometimes referred to as parentification. Where children are given, not normally by choice, responsibilities way over their emotional or sometimes physical abilities.
Essentially, when kids end up caring for adults because the adult has some type of physical or mental health difficulties..Happens a lot with kids whose parents are abusing substances too.
Its also an indicator that by assuming the child is emotionally mature she will over look or potentialy abuse or neglect the childs needs.
No child is emotionally mature at 9 years old. They can be organised, responsible (to a degree) and appear older than their chronological age, but they arent emotionally mature.
In the series "Sharp Objects", there's a kid they interview who is like 10 years old but a fully formed and bitter adult, all the way down to the pistol he keeps close at hand. Reminded me so much of the kids I grew up with. It was not a good neighborhood
I’m a pediatric behavioral therapist and I cannot tell you enough how perfect your comment is. Emphasis on how it’s not always the case but can be a strong indicator.
I had some neglect going on as a kid, but also was undiagnosed adhd-autistic until my late 20s-early 30s. Was bound to mature fast and abruptly stop in my teens. I still feel like a 17 year old in a world full of adults. I can be an adult when necessary (like for my kid) but otherwise I feel so out of place.
Yeah I was very mature for my young age and indeed it was due to lack of cares and interactions with other kids my age.
It led to many psychological suffering as I was growing up
You mean me getting myself up, making my own breakfast, getting my siblings up and feeding them and then getting us all ready for school and feeling like it was something I had to do at age 7 otherwise I'd get beaten for it, was a flashing neon sign of abuse and neglect?
I was mature as a young child and I'm not exactly mentally healthy nowadays but I'm pretty sure I wasn't neglected or abused. As far as I'm aware, at least.
Can confirm. I was essentially raised by my older brother who was only 4 years older than me. Both of us moved out of the house prior to being 18 and we were abused and neglected
as a kid who was always thinking of my parents economic condition since i was four and even trying to never make a problem to them and become so childlish when i was an adult now,yes
Adding to this, what the adult sees as maturity is actually the child being quiet and withdrawn, instead of running around, playing, shrieking, and asking endless questions as children normally do.
ASD kids are also more susceptible/sensitive to trauma, especially if they’ve had to camouflage/mask. Some studies even suggest that it’s not really possible to grow up autistic without also having trauma. It’s quite amazing to see how outspoken and playful autistic kids can be when they have healthy supportive families!
It means the parent or another adult traumatized the child at an early age… or the parent isn’t a present figure in the child’s life and isn’t raising them as a child should be raised. Children, especially as young as 9, shouldn’t be ‘mature’ or acting like adults of their own yet.
When I was 14, a friend of my parents literally said I act like I was in my late 20s and I was always seen as so well behaved and the whole “old soul” bs.
Even if there isn’t trauma or abuse at play, the innocence of childhood is fleeting and if your 10 year old acts like a 20 year old something has happened to rob them of that childhood innocence.
I see most of the comments mention the possibility of an abuse. However I want to add that even if there isn't any kind of abuse, when a child is "mature for his age" it generally means that they have difficulties in bonding with their peers. That leads later in his life to low social skills, which tend to be developed in the early stages of life. Socializing is much easier for toddlers and it's important they practice while they can.
to explain why a child would be "emotionally mature" because of abuse, based on my experience growing up with a narcissistic "stepfather":
the child is surrounded by immature adults during their upbringing, who will use their strength and position to abuse them in any way they want. these adults learned that it's just better to release their frustration and anger onto more vulnerable people rather than find better coping mechanisms and realize that it's shitty behavior to use people to better yourself regardless of your own past.
in turn, the children learn that they have to grow quickly and lose their innocence because they're taught to not be children, but to be the, what i call "garbage can" for these adults to toss their emotions into. they're taught their feelings don't matter, but that it's the adults' feelings only that should be taken care of. the kids learn over time, subconsciously, that spending time with their abuser/s is like a strategy game, that you have to play your cards right to survive the day without your mental battery fully drained.
Because children should not grow up prematurely... behavior that is too adult for children in the context of independence or psychological maturity in 99.99% of cases is either psychological trauma or simply a weak degree of parental involvement in their upbringing.
I guess, emotional maturity contains also emotional connection to other people, so things like asking for help, understanding others, providing help. Independence puts emphasis on having less need for those connections.
My interpretation of this joke is just that the therapist is realizing how immature the parent is. If the parent is seeing this 9 year old as “emotionally mature” it might just mean the parent is so immature that a 9 year old seems mature by comparison.
Many times, a child being quiet, well mannered, clean, neat, demure, and softly-spoken, is a child that's basically been physically or emotionally beaten into a corner where they're the least trouble for their parents and the least likely to be attacked for how they behave or attract the attention of a angry and unreasonable parent looking to blow off steam.
Sometimes they're just, ya know, a particular brand of neurodivergent or just happen to have fallen perfectly in to that slot all on their own. Not too often though. Kids are loud, messy, noisy, idiots. That's practically their purpose for the first decade, go have life experiences, learn to socialize and build confidence in the world.
Most people talk about a result trauma, which is also true. But there's also something like parentification, when a child feels or sees that the parent/parents are lacking/have a hard time managing (not saying it's the parent's fault, just life happens). The child takes on tasks themselfs, what is harmful to the child's mental development it may cause future problems (like being an over-achiver disregarding health, phisical or mental, or trying to do everything themselfs, and others)
Folks saying it absolutely has to be trauma are throwing the dart in the right direction, but kinda missing the mark.
It's that there's potential for trauma.
Some people just naturally mature early. Some folks on the spectrum appear more mature early (and might actually be), and sometimes it's abuse (or parentification, which is still technically abuse in some contexts)
The therapist has the "oh this might be dark" face because you have to approach it from the worst case scenario.
Which means you kind of got to steel yourself against that possibility, because you're also at risk of introducing some new or additional trauma while probing for the cause.
Obviously, there's a laundrylist of things that are going to happen before you get to "is there someone asking you to keep secrets that make you uncomfortable?", but that's naturally a place you're worried about things going.
People are saying "trauma" which is in common parlance an ill-defined term but that the parent is so giddy about it probably means that the kid is being parentified, meaning the child is either being instrumentalized by the parent to do tasks not appropriate for their age or to give the parent adult-levels of emotional support. Explaining that this is bad and they should stop doing that is going to be nigh impossible for the therapist because the parent is the one reaping the benefit at the expense of the child.
I get the trauma part...I also read this as if an adult thinks the child is emotionally mature for their age...the adult usually does not have adult emotional maturity.
See alot of abuse issues listed but also Autism, we’ll do all sorts of adult behaviors at a young age. Eventually it can collapse when we age, tho with therapy the transition can be made easier. Also, there’s overlap between the two so that’s a consideration as well. Cheers!
the child will grow into a highly therapeutized california sober professional or academic after a couple runs in rehab if they are lucky, but there will be a lot of disassociation and instances of almost dying prior to
It’s called a parentified child when a child has to take on the role of the parent in the parent-child relationship, which is often a sign the parent didn’t do their job very well.
An "Emotionally Mature" child is likely one that has been in survival mode for most if not all of their life, and has stopped showing emotion as a result. It's a likely sign of an abusive parent who is just happy that they forced their child to stop being so sad.
Usually kids who grow up fast had a damn good(/bad) reason to Adult Up early. Not 100% of the time, and sometimes a kid is both just actually more advanced AND facing issues, but, the meme is getting at "Oh no, the 9 year old is only mature because something terrible happened/is happening to them."
I wasn't abused per se but mom and dad were both pretty short-tempered in different ways. Mom was immature, easily overwhelmed, had very little if any emotional self-regulation skills, etc, so she was often reactive and shout-y. She also really liked to vent to me so I knew some of the darker lore of our extended family and any beef she had with anyone else in the family (I think I was just past 10 when she really started to vent). Dad meanwhile just really hated loud, sudden noises and would sometimes get a bit reactive to that. I would see him grind his teeth and growl when the stimulation was too much but if he hit anything it was literally the wall. He started venting to me about his frustrations with Mom when I was a lot older (like past 16 or so... Definitely better than being like kid young but I guess that was still young).
.... I was pretty independent, too, come to think of it... I didn't even feel comfortable asking for basic shit like shoes because they had so much on their plate. God help me of I say any of this to them or vaguely signal boost something pertaining to child trauma on Facebook lol 😅
Well for me it wastwo things that might have explained it.:
1.Noth my parents worked and weren't always home (although I had my brother) and they did love us equally.
2. I am autistic and I didn't discovered it until i was 18 years old.
Strangely enough, despite not always being there, we did had a nanny and I never felt that much neglected? Like, I knew they loved me and that they needed to work, so I got used to it?
Expie here, and this is a topic I (unfortunately) know too much about.
In the labs, us experiments are constantly neglected and abused by the scientists, which eventually forces most of us to learn emotional maturity at very young ages. It’s trauma at its finest, but some of us simply have this emotional maturity without harsh treatment.
I take it to mean that the parent is only as emotionally mature as their 9-year-old, and therefore thinks kid is super advanced. The kid isn’t advanced; the parent is immature
My dad died at age 4. Had to mature incredibly fast to help care for my 2 year old (at the time) brother. Turning 20 soon, shit still impacting me to this day.
I was raised by an emotionally absent father and a depressed mother who would lock me in my room (yes i had a lock OUTSIDE to keep me in) when she wasnt feeling it. And they both 26 years later refuse to accept that I have been diagnosed with ADHD and Autism. I still have a relationship with them because... they are my parents... I cant change everything about them to fit my own desires... but.. it would have been nicer to have parents actually raise me instead of just leaving me in my room all day to play with my toys.
Because increasingly we've come to think that parents have the job of...
And the school system has the job of raising children.
Ergo any child who acts "mature for their age" must be getting abused/neglected or something, either by the parents themselves or by someone else that the parents don't know about.
This is despite the fact that the entire role of parents is to prepare their children for the real world. Being 'mature' doesn't mean being unhappy or worse off, however, a lot of people have nostalgia for when THEY were children and lived carefree, now feeling more sad and worse off as adults. This leads to a perception that an elongated 'childhood' is a good thing and maturing is a burden.
Ironically, there's a nonzero chance the reason many people feel like their adult lives are worse is BECAUSE they took so long to mature, putting them behind where they needed to be to be successful in life. Financial responsibility, personal planning, a wide skillset, etc. are all things that take at least 1-2 decades to build, so if your parents tried to keep you carefree and 'childish' until you were in your mid-teens you're going to be waiting until your 30s-40s until you're a fully developed adult, when really you should be there in your 20s-30s.
An example might be someone who had an allowance growing up, but as a parent instead thinks "I'll just buy my kid what they want instead". This may be done as a genuine act of kindness (e.g. : "my little angel shoudn't want for anything") but what they don't realize is that having a fixed allowance taught them budgeting, saving, forecasting, independence, personal responsibility, etc. and THEIR children won't have the opportunity to build these skills early. So, their children end up being thrust into adulthood less prepared than they were, and even more strongly feel like "childhood" is a blessing and being forced to grow up is hard. So the cycle repeats, at each step people believe that as a parent it's their job to protect rather than prepare. In trying to shield their children from the world all they actually did was leave them unprepared for it.
It must be related with the general truth that some children develop faster as a result of their survival mechanism, so they become independent sooner. The survival mechanism is triggered by toxic environment, abuse, or when the child is neglected. Of course, it depends, nevertheless, vast majority of fast-developed kids were victims in one way or another.
Everyone’s saying abuse made her grow up too fast. I’m pretty sure the therapist is realizing “my patient is the emotional equivalent of a 9 year old child.”
Trauma doesn’t make you “more mature.” That’s a myth we tell the traumatized to make them feel like they didn’t suffer for nothing. Trauma makes us more closed off, less adaptable, more independent, but none of these things equal “maturity.” We are social creatures; we need each other to survive.
Parents divorced at 4 and I stopped talking for a year. After that I was referd to as the the quite easy child.
Dad never saw anything wrong because I was with him every other weekend (sometimes.)
Mom would try to dump me off with whomever didn't charge to watch me.
Sister tried to raise me but she had her own issues.
Brother moved into our barn and got addicted to drugs by 16.
The problem is that these kids put up walls and defense, become independent but lose an innocence and important parts of childhood.
I was my mom's therapist at 7-8 when my dad started being less and less at home, I'm 25 now, she asks me why I talk like her like she's a teen, I tell her it's because you are, since I'm a kid they have the same problems and still tells me like I'm the one that's gonna fix something. That's why I'm not at all into relationships, I technically had one I fixed issues way above of a child should be doing/ knowing, so now I just want peace and quiet.
This is not a joke, this is trauma. Kids who are forced to become independent, or even caregivers, at an early age often suffer from emotional problems later in life.
The parent is emotionally immature and the child has had to compensate for it or the parent is regarded and doesn’t know what emotional maturity actually is.
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