The Difference Between Adults and Children

Hi,

What is the difference between adults and children? It sounds like a silly question but I honestly do not think that a lot of people understand the difference between the two. Being 18 or older does not make you an adult, your behavior does. We all know of at least one child that is more of an adult than actual adults. It’s quite sad. Though, that begs the question of what makes an adult an actual adult. I think it has to do with two things: self-control and personal responsibility.

Self-Control:

• Self-control is our ability to control ourselves even when temptations are high. For example, an adult could practice self-control on payday by paying their bills, putting some money into a savings account, and investing for their future before spending any of their payday money on “wants.” This would be the adult thing to do on payday. Unfortunately, not every adult does this (myself included). Though, this is where the most important part of being an adult comes into play: Personal Responsibility.

Personal Responsibility

• Personal responsibility is taking responsibility for our actions. Imagine you overheard an exchange between two children on a playground that goes something like this:

  • Child 1: (accidentally bumps into another child on the playground and knocks them over)

  • Child 2: Ouch! That really hurt!

  • Child 1: I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you. Are you okay? (While also helping them off the ground)

  • Child 2: I’m okay. Thank you for helping me. I know you didn’t do it on purpose.

  After hearing that, you’d probably think “Oh that was a very mature exchange for a couple of children.” Why? Because the child that accidentally bumped into the other took responsibility for their actions even though it was a mistake.

• Now let’s go back to the self-control example above. Imagine it’s payday and you just blew half of your rent money on a pair of shoes because you couldn’t practice self control. Mistakes happen. Adults slip up. But the difference between an adult and a child in this case is that an adult would accept responsibility for their actions and would take the necessary steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It sounds ridiculously easy on paper but it much harder to execute in real life.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, personal responsibility is vital in three areas of our lives: sex, finances, and health. Self-control is important in these areas as well. For example, we can practice self-control in our sex lives if we don’t wish to conceive a child and take full responsibility for conceiving a child even if it happens on accident. If we don’t, then we don’t deserve to be adults. Same could said about health, we could lack self-control when it comes to food at certain times when it comes to desserts or overeating (I know I surely do). Which happens and it completely fine but it is our job as adults to take responsibility for our health. We should make sure that we’re taking the appropriate steps to improve our health.

As adults we will fail at practicing self-control, but we should never fail at practicing personal responsibility. But when we as adults fail at practicing both self-control AND personal responsibility we are not adults, we are children.

Thanks for reading.