Are you a grown up?

What is an adult? To many different people the question could be answered many different ways. As I am sure you will see, my definition is pretty strict and excludes a lot of people.

According to dictionary.com an adult is a person who "is fully grown or developed or of age".  Saying that a person who is any one of these three things is an adult does not seem right to me. I believe that you must have all three of these things in order to be an adult.

I look at the term fully grown and I think physical development. Developed makes me think of mental development. And age as a metric seems to be a generalized yardstick saying by x point in life a person should have had y number of experiences. Now how about some examples that show why I think you need all three of these traits in order to be considered an adult.

To start with, look at the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie Big. In the beginning he is a child. Something happens and one day he wakes up in the body of a fully grown male of the human race. At first this seems awesome because it lets him have access to many parts of life that a child is not allowed to take part in.

But, if you have seen the movie, I am sure you will agree that although he is a fully grown person he is certainly not an adult. His true self, the one inside the body of the adult, has not developed mentally to the point where he can understand many of the subtle intricacies that lead to knowing what the right and wrong choice in a given situation are. And he is not old enough to have collected enough experiences to have learned by watching the choices of others what the right or wrong thing to do is.

How about age alone as a metric for choosing whether or not a person is an adult? There are several different numbers that are used to decide who is an adult and who is not. For now let's just pick one. Say 18 is the age of adulthood. Some people as they are being raised are extremely worldly and streetwise and know many things about how to survive and get along with others by the time they are in their early teens. Others at 25 or even older have none of this knowledge and experience because they are and have been sheltered by relatives who feel that they are keeping them safe by shielding them from reality. The streetwise teen in their not fully developed body can handle themselves in situations where the "adult" would curl up in a corner and cry or worse yet, not even make it out alive. Is it really fair to call the worldly teen a child but call the sheltered 25 year old an adult?

And last but not least, what about the person that physically has quite a bit of growing to do and is still under the "age" of adult hood but who has a fully developed mind? Persons like the fictional character of "Doogie Hauser", are they adults? Not hardly.

To be an adult a person must be fully grown, have a well developed mind and be old enough to have had enough experiences with life that they can survive in a reasonable manner. For most people this definition would be enough. I add two more things to the definition which will cause the exclusion of a great many people.

I also believe that in order for a person to be an adult, they must be able to differentiate between what they want to do in a given situation and what is right to do in that situation. And, most of the time, they must be mature and responsible enough to make the right choice.