transition to adulthood

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I was just curious to hear your perceptions of the transition to adulthood. How is it different for you than the typical person, how is it different for youth today than it was 50 years ago? What do you think you need to make this transition easier?

I am really interested in hearing and would like to add some personal quotes into a paper I am writing on Autism. If you post and don't mind me quoting you anonymously, please also include your age and gender.

I really appreciate it

Thanks Jaimee

I can't speak to 50 years ago or how it is for the typical person.

But I didn't really feel like I was an adult with some grasp of the world until I was around thirty. It wasn't so much that I felt I knew what I was doing but more that I realised that the massive faking it that I have been doing is a) as good as I'm going to get, and I suspect b) true of NTs to a lesser extent.

Male, 35

For me, the transition to adulthood is kind of jarring because it requires relying more on areas I'm not very strong in. In the past, most of the things I had to do required my academic skills, which are higher than average; now, more things require social skills and executive functioning, both of which I'm lower than average in. So I have to shift from zooming ahead of the people around me to lagging behind the people around me.

(female, 21)

It seemed as if becoming an adult was extremely surrealistic and took an extremely long time. I did not really feel like an adult for a long time. It seemed really unreal.

I was doing all of the things that adults are supposed to do, it just didn't feel like I was actually grown up. I was also thrust into adulthood before I was really ready for it, so I suppose that added to the unreality of the whole thing.

Female, 38

Well, I fell apart completely when I got to college. I'm not diagnosed with AS yet, but I'm going to a shrink for just that purpose on Thursday, and it turns out her specialty is transitioning aspies into adulthood.

College was/is very tough for me because I am an extremely goal-oriented person. In high school, there was a very clear path in front of me - do well in school, take the SAT's, do your extracurriculars etc., and then it's off to a great college. Once you get into college, though, unless you are dead set on med school or something like that from the get-go, there is no longer any sort of obvious path. Without a goal or a REASON for studying (everything has to have a reason for me, and getting good grades to show off and to boost my ego was no longer reason enough for me as a young man), I lost my motivation.

Another issue is that college students have to be responsible for organizing their own lives for the first time. Focusing on staying organized is much more important for me than for the average person. I find a lot of people just "wing it" and it all seems to work out, but if I don't plan what I need to get done in advance, it rarely ends up happening. So, without someone to watch over me, I became very disorganized and almost frighteningly unproductive.

Finally, a lot of people are exposed to drugs and alcohol for the first time in college. I was, and I have an extremely addictive personality. This combined with the fact that I was exposed to drugs and alcohol during a period of much anxiety, uncertainty, and questioning (major loss of identity) led to me being very quickly swept up into a pattern of drug/alcohol abuse that lasted for about two years. I hit bottom with drugs/alcohol MUCH more quickly than most, although certainly my story is not unprecedented by any means.

I still feel like the kid or young teenager still trying to be all grown up.
I am 26. I have had various jobs (including full time positions) since I was 15, am going to me 3rd year of college this fall, yet still don't have a grasp at what being an adult feels like. Unless it feels exactly the same as not being an adult, then WTF world!? Why confuse me all these years?

I feel as if I have been the exact same person inside forever. My chronological age has changed, but my mental age has not. I have simply amassed more information. As a child, I felt like an adult trapped in a child's body. Now, as I stare down my fast-approaching 30th birthday, it's extremely difficult for me to wrap my head around that idea. My 30s? It feels wierd! I'm just me, and yet I've been assigned this numerical value.

I'm still the same six-year-old Daniel, there's been no transition.

26, but no different from when I was six; my body is just bigger, but my mind is the same

I feel like a 9 year old trapped in a 33 year old's body. That probably explains my immature interests, particularly in movies, and my strong need to take Baby Sid, everywhere with me, though I know that he's only a piece of plastic, as a dumb ass male staff worker at my clubhouse, told me. :O)

I don't really feel like I've ever made that proper transition from kid to adult, well not fully at least.
I don't feel the same age inside as I actually am. Sometimes I feel like an old man or still a teenager inside.
My adult social skills are quite lacking as such I lag behind my peers by a fair number of years(7-10 years now). I don't really feel like an adult the majority of the time.

Male, 27

I'm female and 22.

It's very strange. As far as it goes mentally, I suppose I haven't really changed much - by that I mean my attitudes, opinions, choices, behaviors. I agree with those who say they were adults all of their lives. However, I certainly notice that I'm getting more information and more understanding. Sometimes when I look back on a younger self, it feels like that self was in a fog and now it's clear - I can understand why person x did something to me as a child, for example, and when I was a child I had no idea why they had done it or what their intentions were.

However, as for the external transition to adulthood - it's very difficult. In some ways I am decades ahead of my age (not years), but in other ways, I'm still so... well, I say different from others my age, but I suppose some people would say "behind" in terms of development. It's hard to reconcile those two, especially when people have difficulty understanding how such a "mature" person could be so (choose your adjective: inflexible, awkward, frustrated, frustrating, stubborn, immature, whatever). I'm really not, though - well, maybe I'm some of those things - but mostly it's that my reasons for doing what I do are incomprehensible or not understood.

It's very hard to try to "bring up" the parts of me that aren't adult to the parts of me that have been adult for my entire life. People notice.

I feel like a child (10 or 11) that pretends to be in their late teens around most people, and knows enough and is smart enough to pull it off most of the time. I work, have interests in that age category, still live at home, still look and dress like I'm in my teens, but I'm actually 25. But even with a few mature interests, appearing more mature than 10 is just a pretense. Most people that know me well understand that.

I am 43 years old, yet there are people who would say I wasn't a full adult. Sometimes I still feel like that little girl who started school not knowing English (although I have a Master's in English and have even taught English at a junior college). I feel like a child in an adult world. If I told anyone that, they'd think I was stupid. I have developed a good reputation at work. Maybe it is just my perspective. In other ways, my interests are those of someone a full generation older. I am on the fast track to being an old crazy cat lady at 43.

I'm 30 and I'm still exploring the right route towards this elusive territory called "adulthood".

I thought I was pretty mature for a teenager. I had a melancholic patience that could either be misperceived as mature or willingly masochistic. The few friends I had could come to me to talk about their issues. Since I wasn't really very talkative, I was always a willing listener, and my aspie rationality often allowed me to lend straightforward, logical advice. Although I now look back and realize my teenage cohorts didn't really want rationality and instead needed a simple emotional connection that I sometimes detached myself from in favor of a complex, objective point-of-view. Also, during this time in my life, my ability to mimic well kept my painful naivette in check alot of the time.

During my 20's, the tolerable melancholia and clever mimicry disentegrated into mood/personality disorders, medication, and a regression into child-like energies. A difficult decade.

Now that I'm 30...my more rational/objective side is returning, although hesitantly. I really have no idea what this decade in my life has in store for me. I hope I find the comfortable compromise between maturity and child-like energy...