When/Why did your parents start treating you like an adult?

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Title says it all really. Was there a particular age or some change(moving out perhaps?) that made your parents decide that now you were an adult?

The less I depended on my parents, the more they treated me like an adult. Biggest change was when I got a job out of high school & no longer asked them for money.

It also helped that I rarely brought my troubles & crazy antics home with me. Expecting them to tolerate that stuff is probably the most dependent thing you can do. That's why it took so much longer for my sister to earn the same treatment.

I was treated like an adult the minute I turned 18. I was the most responsible out of all my siblings.

My father, when I got my s**t together, went back to college and was actually passing all my classes. My mother probably never will, which is a sad situation. My elderly grandmother still treats my mother like a child at times, which in turn causes my mother to dismiss my grandmother as being childish herself. I guess if you want respect you have to give respect.

My mother started treating me a little more like an adult once I moved out two days after my 18th birthday.

It feels good knowing that she can't pull the same crap that she pulled when I lived under her roof. She doesn't even criticize my clothes anymore.

Instead of "those ugly, bag-lady clothes", they are "your personal style."

When I was 17 and a half. I had already been accepted to college and had my scholarship lined up, and I had a part time job earning my own money.

My mother didn't start speaking as respectfully to me as I would like until I was 23, though, and had a big fight with her that ended with me saying if she would stop using the word "should" in her utterances to me we could get along (she always was telling me how I "should" dress, arrange my furniture, etc.) Much better!

They never did.

My dad started treating me more or less as a stranger when I started dating, although he was marginally more respectful after I got a job.

But my mother...no. She treated my brother as an adult from the word go, I think, but because I was a girl I was expected to always be mommy's obedient little dolly. She died earlier this year and frankly, it's a relief not to have to think about how much my next independent decision will outrage her. Sorry if that sounds callous, but that's how it is.

Never.

Not until I'd been moved out for years. Don't know if my dad will ever totally see me as a grownup because he doesn't seem to see himself as one?!

I have outlived both my parents.

When you are young you look up to your parents and want them to help and support you.

But there comes a time when they look to you for advice and support.

That is when you really understand that you are an adult and must step up to the plate.

That is when you understand that you must be the head of the family even if you don't know the right thing to do.

Just as your parents weren't sure of what to do.

I left home back around 1970. My parents didn't think of me as an adult back then - of course, that was forty years ago. My mother's dead now, and my father's been aspie - I believe - all his life, so he doesn't think about other people much at all. And, being aspie myself (albeit undiagnosed) I didn't think much about them either. They had other children who stayed closer to home, so they didn't need me anyway.

My mom moved out when I was 14, because of marital problems. I lived with my dad, because my mom only had a studio apartment. My dad treated me like an adult pretty much. At the time I thought it was good to be able to stay up until 3 am on a school night or stay out all night without him asking where I was. In retrospect, that was pretty crappy. I got in a lot of scrapes, and did a lot of stupid things. I also had absolutely zero preparation for adulthood and still don't know which way is up.

My father never really wanted to be a parent, so my becoming an adult made our relationship easier. He was absent from my life for many years when I was young. My father has some Aspie traits, so he and I get on when talking about math, science, and computers. Otherwise, little happens.

My mother continues to treat me as a kid or teenager, depending on her mood and needs. She doesn't accept the AS diagnosis, and is convinced that I just need to try harder to build my social skills, develop normal interests, and get into a stable relationship that leads to marriage.

Note: I am in my 40s. Also, parents went their separate ways when I was in 5th grade. I lived with my mother first, then with my father until he threw me out just before I turned 16. I went back to live with my mother, then to college. Even though living on my own is challenging, I can't live with either parent.

Finally, I'm not actually sure what it means to be treated like an adult. Perhaps because I haven't had the experience, or I'm unable to differentiate or otherwise process something involving the experience.

I asked my husband with AS this question. His response was that his parents started treating him like an adult after high school because he had a lot more independence then.

I said that I thought his dad largely treated him like an adult when he was a teen, basically going along with whatever my husband wanted, while his mom still doesn't think he's an adult but respects the boundaries he sets in as much as he enforces them. She would be happy to have him at home, doing his laundry and cooking his food and nagging him to death about every minor detail of his life, to this day if she could. And she'd try to make it happen if she thought she had any chance of it.

He said that he thought I was right.