Adolescence and Childhood

The time in a person's life when it is time to grow up and become a teenager is commonly misunderstood. It is usually not growing up as parents like to add, but rather deciding how you are going to live your life. In childhood, precisely the time before adolescence, most children are carefree and somewhat respectful. Suddenly something clicks in the mind of all those people that they should be treated as equals among adults. The idea itself is not immature; it is the prevalent way that many teenagers act on this principle. As a child, you adore to be treated as a little kid for the simple reason that people like you. You are the center of attention for a short while until something else happens. In the teenage years, people will try to treat as an adult when you want them to, or act like you are a little kid once again. In the minds of these people, it is extremely aggravating.

In childhood, you do not care how people treat you unless they suddenly switch to violence. In adolescence, you care unless someone treats you unequal. I once had a teacher that made my entire class dance and sing to a song I clearly remembered listening to once in preschool, but I immediately abhorred it. The way I wanted to be treated at the time had switched from attention to like an adult.

Childhood and the teenage years aren't all that different though. This depends on the person in question. Some people do not change at all. They are the same as ever before in the way that they had wanted to be treated like an adult all their life. Another way is that most adults will still see you as a child even though that is not what you wish. My aunts still give me that squeeze on the cheek when I see them. It doesn't matter that much to me because I only see them about four times a year.

As a young child, nothing in the world matters except that you get your present on Christmas or that everyone is nice to you. This becomes completely different as you pass through those five or so years. Everything in the world matters whether it is in your city or around the world. You seem to care more about the big picture. I was completely oblivious of other countries until the age of seven.

Around the teenage years, many people develop strange ideas where they think that they are right and are too stubborn to turn away for one second and play the devil's advocate on their own idea. In childhood, if you are wrong in saying that some people steal because they like to laugh, you accept it and move away from that idea. In adolescence, if you say something new like people steal because they want to see what happens when the world goes up in flames, and you turn out to be contradicted by someone else, you tend to never let go of that encounter with the person in question and assume you are right because of their "incompetence."

It's amazing that adults want to be kids again, and teenagers want to grow up. The only reason I can find on this particular subject is that children and teenagers are ignorant of what adult life really is. Adults want to have that ignorance back because they have already seen what their life is like, and they don't like it. Even though there are many more differences between childhood and adolescence, the greatest similarity in my opinion is ignorance.

These two sections of the life time line meet at one of the most confusing times of someone's life. The differences far outweigh the similarities. Everything seems to be changing at once, and that doesn’t bode well with many teens living in modern day times. One day I woke up and wanted to go watch TV all day. The very next day I woke up and didn’t know who exactly I was.