Some people can't say for sure or pinpoint a moment when they knew they were no longer children, but some can. I'm one of those people.

My moment, though I was already 22 at the time and by most accounts had been an adult for a few years, came last summer.

For me it was the day I learned that Judith Barsi, the little girl who'd voiced Anne Marie in All Dogs Go to Heaven and Ducky in the original Land Before Time movie, had been brutally murdered by her father shortly after those movies were completed.


Like most children viewing their favourite movies, those figures onscreen were not just characters. They were real. They were my friends. This may sound silly to other people, but even though I was far past the point of believing in those characters the way a child would, the knowledge that this little girl who had been not one, but two, of my childhood "friends" had been dead all along struck me in a way I wasn't prepared for.

After learning of Judith's tragic fate, I remember being pretty silent for a few days, letting it sink in and what it really meant. I can't quite explain it, but at the end of that time period I knew I wasn't a kid anymore.

gosh, i don't know. in some ways i had to grow up pretty quickly when i was a kid, and in some ways there are parts of me as an adult that are still very childlike. i think adulthood and childhood kind of swirl together in my pointy little head.

yep, mom's nervous breakdown and dad's trip to rehab did it for me.

JerseyKRS said:

Thinking about my life, most people would probably assume my father's death would have been my trigger into adulthood. But I was only a few weeks short of turning 7. His passing changed me and shaped me in a very definite way. Perhaps some of my innocence was lost -I never had the sense of immortality other young people possess. But I was still a child after then, albeit an altered one.

meow85 said:

it's awesome though, cause when our lives get crazy, we both have a gauge set too high for us to reach.

"wow, we paid the rent late.....at least we're not in rehab like Dad was!"



, sad but true!

when the girls in my dads Playboys were younger than me...

JerseyKRS said:

So in some ways could you almost look at it as a twisted positive? Some people have no set line to cross because they've never experienced anything worse than accidentally killing a pet goldfish.

roodboi said:

So...13?


J/K. Playboy's been really good about ID checking its models. Still though, 18 ain't all that ancient...

The summer before my freshman year in high school, when I was 14 years old, my mother made me get a real job at the University of Texas. She had a friend that managed the cafeteria at one of the dorms and overlooked the fact that I was 2 years below the legal age to work. After that I worked every summer and eventually during the school year. I bought all my own school clothes and paid for EVERY expense in high school until graduation including braces, pictures, graduation announcements, class ring, cap and gown, prom dress and expenses, EVERYTHING. Bye, bye, childhood.

I'm going to be 42 and I think it just happened to me.

On one of my dad's trips back home (he moved to Guadalajara Mexico a few years ago) I noticed how much slower he walked. For some reason that did it for me.

Since my parents did not tolerate behavior in their children that would not be condoned in adults, I'm guessing my childhood ended the first time I heard the word, "don't."

when i realized that no matter how shitty my little sister treated me, i still had unconditional love for her and wanted her to like me/us to get along. it kinda freaked me out. i think i was 13 or 14.

SCNDLS said:

I got my first job at 17 and paid my own way from that point on. That didn't end up spelling adulthood for me though.

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

My grandmother is normally an incredibly active 88 year old, and in better shape than most 50-somethings. A few months ago she suffered a minor accident, and for the first time I could remember she really looked her age, all bent over and crippled like she (temporarily) was. Even though I know she was born in 1920 and as such definitely wasn't young, before that it had been so easy to think of her as just barely older than her middle-aged children. Seeing her hindered like that slapped me in the face with her real age and mortality.

meow85 said:

14 and 17 are two different ages though. Most 14 year olds I know don't have to be financially responsible for their own expenses or forced to work illegally to do so.

That's a tough question. I would say when I was 8 years old after my parents divorced. My dad quit his job and my mom had to work several jobs to make ends meet which meant I had to take care of myself. The reason why I find this to be a hard question is because even though I had to do grown up things (aside from paying bills, having a job, etc), I still played with dolls and watched Saturday morning cartoons. But I did those things knowing that I was in charge of my own self.

JuliePurplehead said:

I decided I was my own person and was "raising" myself around age 12 or so, even if I wouldn't have put it in those words at that time. But it's when I started questioning positively EVERYTHING and decided even my school grades were none of my parents' business (and I was an honor student).
My entire life I had been told I was mature for my age.

I think I've been a mix of adult and child pretty much ever since.

Yeah, I was a latchkey kid from age eight and my mother left the house at 7 in the morning and didn't come home til 9:30 at night. So I was responsible for getting to and from school and doing my homework without assistance and basically raising myself without supervision. So I'd say that my eyes were open from an early age and I hadn't felt "childlike" after the age of 7. Hell, I bought my first Prince album, 1999, at age 9 with my own money, unbeknownst to my mom.

yes by the age of 7, my parents divorced and I choosed to live with my dad which meant that i had to take care of myself..

never had any regrets abt that decision

What!? childhood ENDS!?

I would say that I knew I was truely an adult when I had to start paying rent,and bills.

I think it ends when your parents have died.

There were crucial moments that freed me from some of my childhood insecurities, but I feel pretty much like I always did.

But one of those big moments was realizing that everyone is insecure, even the "confident" and popular people. Even the guy with the mowhawk & tattoos on his face is concerned with how he looks. Some people just react to fear differently.

That came around the time I was thinking about that dream where you're naked in public, but for some reason nobody really notices. It's as if we feel exposed for the world to see, but nobody notices because they're too busy noticing that they are naked themselves.

I should add that if my childhood ended it was not a bad thing, but totally liberating!
[Edited 10/1/08 14:10pm]

I think it was when I stopped making my regular runs to Toys R Us.


Which was only a few years ago.

When I discovered what happens when you mix wine, women and the art of getting between the sheets.

Then...

I had kids and now I'm totally reliving my childhood through them...

When i first got drunk when i was 14, im not saying its a grown-up thing getting drunk, but it was a bitter-taste of how the adult life was going too be.
The hangover made me sentimental in a way that has stayed since then, cause i drank many times after that cause i thougt it was something cool too do.
Im not drinking anymore, but its hard too go back the way it was before.

I think when I saw my father hauled off to jail after an undercover cocaine drug bust outside my house. I had just gotten home from little league with some friends. I think I was probably ten or eleven. I remember my dad in handcuffs as they got him in the black car. My step-mother freaking out and yelling at the cops. All the other regular cop cars popping out of the goddamn woodwork. My baseball buddies saying things, like "whoa" and "shit."

At that moment the cliche "innocence lost," did indeed take over. Little league, baseball, swimming, summer, my Star Wars toys, all of it, seemed pointless.

It's funny for the longest time I could not remember this time in my life. When friends asked about my past, I somehow evaded, repressed, the fact that my father was in jail for four years. When he came out, I was in high-school, played sports, deep in the closet, dating a girl (a frigging cheerleader for fuck's sake), loyal Catholic, straight A student, holding a job and all that bullshit. When he got out, my family acted as if nothing happened. As if he had not fucked up royally. I was expected to go along with the charade. I was able to at first, since my life at that point was already a charade. But, the inevitable cognitive dissonance eventually kicked in and my whole life came crashing down. Which although inevitable, it was the best thing that could've happened to me.

I'm not angry anymore. I hope my note doesn't come off as that. Not bitter, or sad, just in acceptance of the truth and working my damnest to respect the facts of reality.

I've always tried to keep a bit of that childhood quality in myself, it keeps you young at heart and happy when times are bad.

Dayclear said:

Me too. I think I'm more childlike now (and at times infantile ) than I ever was as an actual child.