The Transition to Adulthood

For some teenagers and young adults, adjusting to the realities of adulthood and the working world can be very difficult. Kids who spend their whole childhood playing and being free will find it challenging to give up the freedom they used to know. Parents should think about how to prepare their children for the transition.

These days, the experience of childhood is quite a bit different from the experience of adulthood. That might sound like an obvious statement, but it hasn't always been the case. In centuries gone by, children's lives and adults' lives had a lot more in common.

Only the most privileged children went to school beyond a certain young age, and most children began helping around the house and doing other kinds of work and chores long before we start working today. In short, life wasn't quite as fun for kids back then.

Most people would consider it a good thing that childhood today is a fun and simple time, but it can cause some problems later in life. During the years of adolescence and early adulthood, teens and young adults have to adjust to a way of life that's totally different from the one they learned growing up.

For children, life is all about school, friends, extracurricular activities, and fun.

In the adult world, individuals need to take charge of their work lives - there's no pre-planned curriculum for them to follow. In addition, many of the extracurricular activities and hobbies we learn as kids are no longer available to us as adults.

For example, many kids play a sport or a musical instrument. Only a few of the most skilled and passionate individuals will be able to continue these activities into adulthood.

Losing the way of life we learned as children can be difficult and painful, and it's what makes the transition into adulthood so rocky for so many people. For parents, this situation can cause conflict as well.

Parents want their children to be happy and carefree, but they have to be careful not to shelter their children from the "grown up" world too much. No parents want to see their children suffer, and with a little foresight and planning, parents can make their kids' transitions into adulthood go a little bit smoother.

Although childhood will always be more fun and carefree than adulthood, it's important for parents to have fun in their own adult lives. Kids whose parents have friends, hobbies, and generally enjoy life will have an easier time becoming adults themselves.

That's because their parents set an example of how adults can have fun with life despite having to deal with jobs and responsibilities. By contrast, if children see their parents constantly working, complaining, and focusing on the past, they will not learn that adulthood can be fun too.

Parents who want to help their children's transition to adulthood should also consider training them to accept responsibility from an early age. Kids who are given total freedom are conditioned to love that freedom, and when they learn that the working world requires more structure, they could have a difficult time adjusting.

On the other hand, kids who are engaged in lots of activities, who have regular chores, and who take part-time jobs while they are still in school - those kids will be better equipped to make the change to full-time work when they become adults.

Almost no one wants to work, particularly if they happen to have jobs they don't absolutely love. Most of us would rather be at home, relaxing with our families, or doing the things we like to do. But work is a fact of life.

We work so that we can afford the comfort and luxury to provide our children with those carefree childhoods we so value. If we want our kids to have a healthy attitude toward adult responsibility, we should be thinking ahead.