Growing Up

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 67, 4 October 1940, Page 5

Growing Up

UST what have all these "teen" folk got in common? Simply this: they are all terribly busy in that biggest of all jobs-growing up. That basically is the meaning of adolescence or the "teen" age. Adult life is looming up ever larger on the horizon and it is a very attractive, if occasionally bewildering prospect. At times, no doubt, each of these people feels quite grown up, but at times, too, he feels that it is quite good to forget all about being an adult. It is not so easy for those of us who have left adolescence behind to realise how adults look from the other end of the telescope. I had this forcibly brought home to me not so very long ago. I had cause to ask one of my students whether her sister, who was in another class, was older or younger than she was. The reply was this bomb-shell: "Oh, she’s ever so old-she’s nearly 21." Shades of my vanished youth! But when you come to think of it, twenty-one is quite old-when you’ are only eighteen. The point is this, and it is worth stressing: to the adult both these ages, 18 and 21 may seem very young, but the matter of three years makes a big difference to people of that generation. Let me put this in another way. If any parent were to take his own daughter at 15 and place her alongside an exact model of that same

girl at 10 he would be astonished at the difference. Susan has been the same girl throughout, in one sense. That is, the same individual; but while she has remained Susan she has changed to an amazing extent in those five years. Here is an experiment for parents: See if you can give an accurate description of your own child as he or she was five years ago. You will find the answer to this problem in the family snap album. I’m prepared to bet that you will be wrong in some details at least.(A. B. Thompson, "The Adolescent Child," 1YA, September 5),