When I was about 8/9 years old I was told by a friend of mine I couldn’t play with them any more. Their mother didn’t approve of it for some reason.
One year later I asked my mom if she ever knew why this was the case. She said that other mother thought I wasn’t good enough for her child. But that after a while that mother said she may be okay with it now.
But my mother said she didn’t like that idea. That this friendship would be all reliant on that mother’s “generosity”. And I didn’t feel the need to object to that. My mom’s reasoning made perfect sense to me, even on age 10. This was not the way you treat friendships fairly from a parents perspective, I realised. (There is a little more to this story though, but this is all I care to share.)
I still feel like that was a mature thing I did. Because I was not a child that took ‘no’ very well at that age. So what are your childhood experiences where, now upon looking back, you feel you handled it maturely?
Not that it was remarkably maturely, but I think that it’s funny, so:
I’m maybe, I dunno, 5. The family goes to a theme park that has this ball pit. Little kids can swim around in them. I’m waiting in line and this group shows up sporadically, spread out over the line. Everyone in the group is somewhere in front of me in line except this one little girl, who is right behind me. They hit the maximum number of kids in the ball pool right as I go in, and the attendant says to the little girl “no, sorry, we can’t have any more, you have to wait for the next batch” and she starts to cry. I say “let her go ahead, and I’ll wait for the next batch”. The ball pool attendant, who didn’t want to deal with some hysterical little kid, says to me, “Thanks, kid. Here, you want to say something on the loudspeaker?” and without waiting a sec, sticks the microphone right in my face and keys it. I didn’t, in fact, want to say anything on the loudspeaker, and say “No”, which of course comes out hugely amplified over the ride’s sound system. Every kid in the ball pool looks up petrified, trying to figure out what they just did wrong.
My brother very maturely didn’t kill me when I when I forgot his Gameboy with Pokémon blue and six lvl 99 pokemon in the back of a taxi.
I think homicide is the mature response in this situation
That’s love right there
When I was 10, while riding my bike in the woods, I almost crashed into another cyclists who then swerved into a bush.
When I saw how he was laying there, I noticed he’s in a thicket of burning nettles and his leg was bent the wrong way.
I told him I’m gonna get help, ran to the nearest SOS telephone and called an ambulance.
They had taught us in school what to say and to wait for further questions, which is what I did.
Then I ran back to the man and talked to him until the medics arrived.Paramedic and former ambulance calltaker: Children, especially that age, were by far my preferred callers. They usually are easy to calm down, they follow commands, they answer questions directly. (e.g. “Does the patient currently have trouble breathing?” - an adult answers "Well,he always had this slight wheezing since he caught the Vietnamese Bubblebuttvirus back in 1972, but it got better in 1992, and then he had…’ - a kid simply replies: “he is coughing a lot and breathing like he ran a lot”.).
But back to topic: Same age as you were, probably 10. I was a huge fan of the local fire department back then. One day the adult son of my next door neighbour jumped off their roof,easily 8 to 10m. (Mix of suicide and drugs)
I called the ambulance service, specifically asked them if they would send a helicopter (they frequently do around here), rode my bike to their usual landing spot and led the crew to the patient.
…While three adults forgot to call the ambulance or called the police (different number here) or the local hospital (not helpful,they do not operate the ambulances here.
Maybe,just maybe my career as a paramedic was predestined on this faithful day. (Guy made it,btw. But had more success a few years later)
First aid courses at school do have an effect, I cannot recommend them enough,I have countless sucess stories I came in contact with over the years, including a group of three 12 year olds that resuscitated their teacher.
When I was in secondary school I had to fill out a form over the summer to be allowed to leave early for some school activities. The form required a coach or teacher’s signature. Since it was the summer, I had no contact with any faculty so I had my parents call the coach who told me to sign the form for him, which I did and I turned it in. Unfortunately, that coach left before the beginning of the year so when school started I was called to the principal’s office and accused of forging his signature. I told the principal the coach told me to, so it wasn’t a forgery, I was signing on his behalf, and I even put that on the form. He ended up calling the coach and he even confirmed but at that point he didn’t want to back down and still denied the request.
After I left the two older ladies that ran the office found me and told me they just approved it after he left for the day and he would never know. They were super nice and told me they were proud of me for sticking up for myself. As a barely out of primary school kid it was really intimidating to be yelled at by an adult but I felt so vindicated when they recognized the inequity of the situation and helped me.
That principal ended up only lasting a year too.
In kindergarten after school I had a desinated place to wait for my older siblings to walk home with. they did not show one day (some miscommunications and conflicts in schedules). I walked several blocks to a payphone and called home. the eldest brother who I think was in high school was back by that time and picked me up and was very impressed.
Are you kidding? I didn’t handle things maturely at 23! But hey! thanks for getting me to think about aaaaaallllllllllllllllll of my embarrassing childhood memories. Funny how there’s so few good memories, but loads of embarrassing ones
I’ll do a counter one: an event that I thought I handled maturely for most of my adult life, but came to realize recently that I really handled it immaturely. Warning: venting of implied child abuse.
Tap for spoiler
I was orphaned at ~3 years old. I hadn’t met my biological father yet because he was stuck in Cuba due to tensions between the Soviet bloc and USA. On my actual 9th birthday, I finally met him because he was granted permission to leave Cuba shortly after the dissolution of the USSR. That day, my family threw a huge party. During the party, my biological father mostly engaged with other adults. There weren’t many other kids present, so I mostly just hung out along or bounced around adults. Towards the middle of the party, he pulled me aside and said, “I know that today is your birthday, but all these people are here for me, so I have to attend to them. We can talk tomorrow since I won’t be busy.”
As a child, I didn’t really think that was a complete asshole thing to do and say. Rather, I just went along with it. As I aged, I started thinking more about it, and thought that he was a bit self-centered, but possibly overwhelmed with everything going on. He just left Cuba for the USA and reconnected with family he hadn’t seen in a decade, including his parents and brother. I prided myself in not taking it personal and allowing him to slowly take in his major transition. More recently, I think I handled it poorly by not speaking up to him for myself.
The guy turned out be a raging narcissist that found pleasure in manipulating and belittling others. Other people have told me they thought he was actually a psychopath, which I can’t rule out. It caused him joy to see others beneath him and take advantage of their goodwill. He purposely went out of his way to stunt my personal growth because he did not want me to be “better” than him in his delusional schema.
I think that to have handled it maturely would have been for me to publicly share what he told me in private to everyone and stated how fucked up it was that not only was he neglecting his one son, but playing mind games to devalue him. This would have demonstrated solid boundaries on my behalf and informed other adults of his character. The upcoming years were inline with this pattern of placing himself on a pedestal while devaluing me in private so others wouldn’t notice.
I’m happy he is dead now because I feel free be me and relieved that he isn’t able to hurt others anymore. Last year, I wrote him a letter he couldn’t receive because he was dead, but it was an acknowledgement of his abuse, a dismissal of him from my life, a declaration that his legacy will be of his abusive behaviors towards everyone in his life and that I will never say his name again so that it is forgotten. Any memory of him will die with me like he deserves.
Anyway, if you got to here, thanks for reading and I hope it didn’t cause you any distress. If you find yourself in a relationship with a parent like my biological father, then know that not only in my experience, but also among scientific and professional reports, they never get better. That is who they are, so it is up to you to protect yourself and live your life to the fullest because otherwise, these parasites will not allow you to grow.
