Really Adults?
By this time you may be thinking, “I can see that teenagers have been adults throughout most of history. I know the research shows that they are capable of adult thinking and moral decisions. But, in general, I just do not see teens acting like adults. Are they really adults? If so, why don’t they act like it?”
Teenagers functioned as adults for thousands of years. By definition, people become adults sexually at puberty. They are adults in other ways physically as well. Of course, there are some physical variations in adults over the lifespan, but they are basically very similar. To get some idea of when people become adults physically, you might look at the dosages recommended for some of the non-prescription drugs in the medicine cabinet, drugs you probably have taken.
Pain Relievers
Antidiarrheals
Allergy/Decongestants
All of these have dosages for “Adults and children 12 years of age and over” or for “Adults” (with a warning not to give to children under 12). Even the pharmaceutical companies treat teenagers as adults physically in terms of the over-the-counter medicines.
In previous chapters we have seen that people become adults cognitively and morally at about the age of puberty as well. If they really are adults, why aren’t they treated as adults, and why don’t they act like it? To answer this question, we need to go back nearly two centuries.
The Disease of Precocity
As the age of puberty began to decline and cognitive maturity occurred earlier, people noticed that children were capable of adult-like thought at earlier ages. In 1832 Amariah Brigham said, “Precocious maturity of the mind is nearly always a disease.” That is, people who could think like adults at an earlier age than the previous generation were thought to be sick.
The July 15, 1843, issue of Common School Journal said, “If a child exhibits any symptoms of precocity, it should be taken immediately from books and permitted to ramble and play in the open air, or engage in manual labor.” That is, children who are ahead of the others in their thinking may be getting sick, and teachers should take away their books and send them out to recess or give them a craft to do.
Today we would call these “gifted” children and place them in accelerated programs, but as adolescence was being invented, people “trembled” for their precocious children. The newly created adolescents were kept from maturing too rapidly. Some said about them, “Early ripe, early rot.”
No parents wanted their children to have this disease which was associated with everything from tuberculosis to insanity. In 1881 in the American Public Health Association: Papers and Reports, Charles Folsom had a paper titled “The Prevention of Insanity.” In it he said, “In boyhood and girlhood comes first the dangers from confinement in the bad air of school-rooms, and the hurry and worry and strain of six, seven, or eight branches of study, competitive examinations, prizes, want of out-door exercise, insufficient time for meals, evening study, morning langor, and, after a few years, the break-down with which so many of us are already too familiar.” That is, school can drive you crazy.
The desire to slow development lasted more than a century and is still held by many today. An article by Bernice Berk in 1988 in Good Housekeeping was titled “Help! At 11 She’s Already a Teenager: Why kids grow up so fast and how to slow the pace.” In 1984 in a chapter in Parents & Teenagers, written for Christian parents, Larry Richards said, “With my own teens I felt that slowing down adolescence was a positive thing and so I very consciously insulated my teens from the fast pace of growth that adolescent culture assumes.” To slow their adolescence, he did not let them get their driver’s licenses until they were 18.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Just as people 200 years ago (or 2000 years ago) accepted the “fact” that teenagers should act like adults, people today accept the “fact” that teenagers should act like children. Centuries ago teenagers were told that they were mature and responsible, and they acted like adults. Today teenagers are told that they are immature and irresponsible, and they act like children. In the 1960’s psychologist Robert Rosenthal conducted many experiments showing that people (even animals) behave as others expect them to. This occurs even when the people holding the expectations do not intend to influence the others.
Rosenthal and Jacobson titled their 1968 book Pygmalion in the Classroom. They gave the students in an elementary school a test that was supposed to pick out “late bloomers.” Then they randomly picked out about 20% of the students and told the teachers that these 20% would show remarkable intellectual growth during the next eight months. As you might expect, eight months later the grades of the “late bloomers” were higher. In addition, the teachers said they were more interesting, curious, happy, appealing, adjusted and affectionate than the other students in the class. However, not only did their grades go up but also their scores on objective intelligence tests were higher at the end of that year.
For thousands of years people expected teenagers to be mature and responsible adults, and they were. Now we expect them to be immature and irresponsible children, and they are. Then we tell them they cannot be treated as adults because they are immature and irresponsible.
Maturity Unperceived
People tend to see what they expect to see, even if it is not really there (or not to see what they do not expect, even if it is there). Even if you act as mature, responsible adults, your parents may not see it. In the early 1970s Sociologist David Rosenhan conducted a clever study showing the power that expectations have on perception. Rosenhan invented a “mental disorder” that did not exist. Then he and seven of his associates appeared at mental hospitals saying they heard voices saying “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud.” Other than using aliases, giving false occupations, and saying that they heard the voices, they all gave truthful facts about themselves (all had been screened beforehand to make sure they were mentally healthy.)
They were all admitted to the mental hospitals and diagnosed as having schizophrenia. Given a total of 2100 pills and hospitalized for an average of 19 days (range was from 9-52 days), they were discharged as schizophrenics in remission. This did not mean that they never had schizophrenia but implied that it was lying dormant and might resurface later. At no time did any of the mental health professionals question their diagnosis of schizophrenia, and all of their behavior was interpreted in light of that label. Normal behavior was overlooked or misinterpreted. Normal disagreements were seen as indicators of deep-seated emotional disorders. Even writing on a notepad was seen as a sign of a psychological disturbance.
Although no one on the staffs of the mental hospitals noticed that these “patients” were normal, some other people present did. Ironically, the actual patients in the hospitals noticed that the pseudo-patients were sane, normal people. Since these other patients had not seen the “schizophrenia” diagnosis, they were not interpreting the ordinary behavior with that in mind. Some made comments like, “You’re not a patient here, are you? Are you a reporter?”
Rosenhan did not conclude that the hospital staffs were incompetent or dishonest. There was no evidence of consciously trying to make the evidence fit the label. Staff members were just doing their jobs. The problem was that the labels were so powerful that they profoundly affected the way the staff processed and perceived the information. If those behaviors had been observed in a different context, they would have been interpreted entirely differently.
Likewise, if people in our culture think of adolescents as being immature and irresponsible, then your actions will be interpreted in that context. Even if you behave as mature and responsible individuals, your actions may not be perceived as being mature and responsible.
What can adolescent TCKs do?
There is no really good answer to this question. The concept of adolescence is written into the laws of western cultures, so there is no way that those laws will be changed during your teen years. The best that you can do is to convince your parents that you are mature, responsible individuals. To do this, you have to do four things:
First, overcoming the self-fulfilling prophecy will take effort and discipline on your part. The “natural” thing to do is to act as your parents and culture both expect you to. You will have to intentionally act like an adult rather than like a child if you want to be treated as an adult. This will take a conscious effort on your part rather than “going with the flow” and may result in some rejection by your peers.
Second, to help your parents perceive your maturity may be done by just calling their attention to it if they are familiar with the effect expectations have on perceptions. If they are not aware of the kind of research Rosenhan did, perhaps you can show them the “Maturity Unperceived” section above. Then tell them that you are trying to act like an adult, and ask them to notice that and see how you are doing. There are no guarantees of rapid changes here if they are convinced that you are still a child, but over time their perceptions will change.
Third, earning your parents’ trust takes time. Trust takes at least months, if not years, to build to a high level. You cannot only tell your parents that you are mature and responsible, you must also show them your maturity and responsibility consistently over time. The key to building trust is to be trustworthy. Think about courtship and marriage. First the couple dates a while with the trust gradually increasing. When trust and commitment reach a particular point, the couple becomes engaged, and the trust increases further as the couple asks themselves if they are ready to commit to each other for life. Finally, they marry when trust and commitment reach that level.
Unfortunately, although trust takes time to build, just one wrong act can destroy it, and then rebuilding it is more difficult than building it in the first place. Using our example above, suppose you are dating someone and thinking of marriage. Then you come upon that person hidden under the stairwell at school passionately hugging and kissing someone else. What happens to your trust? It is the same way with your parents seeing your maturity. Acting like a child just once will destroy the trust. If and when that happens, the only thing to do is to start rebuilding it again.
Finally, as a TCK you have one more self-fulfilling prophecy and misperception to overcome. As much as we appreciate “the TCK profile” in terms of helping us understand many people and in helping many TCKs understand themselves, it can also be used incorrectly as a label. As we saw earlier, not everyone who has lived in another culture during developmental years becomes a TCK to the same extent. Not everyone has the same personal characteristics, practical skills, rootlessness, restlessness, relational patterns, developmental issues and unresolved grief. If your parents or agency is applying the TCK label to you inappropriately, you may have to take the same steps as when the adolescent label is applied inappropriately.