The people who were praised for being mature as children and punished for being needy as adults, and the decades it takes to untangle which one was actually true - Silicon Canals

"A child being praised for maturity is usually a child who has agreed, without quite knowing they're agreeing, to take up less space than their age entitles them to. The adults around them get a quieter household, a more manageable kid, a sense that they are raising someone exceptional."

"Some parenting approaches treat early maturity as a virtue, a sign of intelligence or emotional precocity. There's a widespread belief that kids who self-regulate, who don't make scenes, who absorb the emotional temperature of a room and adjust accordingly, are kids who are thriving."

"They didn't throw those parts away. Children can't. They just filed them somewhere the adults couldn't see. The praise was real. So was the price."

"She is now forty-one and cannot, with any reliability, name what she needs on a given afternoon. She can name what everyone around her needs. She can read a room in about four seconds."

Labeling children as mature often serves adult needs, creating a dynamic where children suppress their true emotions to fit expectations. This can lead to a lifetime of difficulty in recognizing and articulating their own needs. While early maturity is praised as a sign of intelligence, it overlooks the emotional costs. Children learn to navigate adult environments at the expense of their own emotional expression, resulting in adults who struggle to identify their own needs later in life.

Read at Silicon Canals