Growing Up is Hard to Do

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got the sense in Europe that they seem to think many of the services we offer students at the Higher Ed level are babying them. I agree with a lot of their education ideals and policies, and the students I met were incredibly mature. So, I've been wondering if I agree with that. I've come to the conclusion that I don't think offering them these services is babying them, but we don't always treat them like adults either. Sometimes this is our own fault, and other times it is out of our control. For example, something that is completely my fault is that I call them kids. I'm barely older then them, and I'm a student myself, but using the term kids keeps me from thinking of them as adults. I could be argued that because I am so close to them in age it is important that make that distinction between us. Good or bad, because I use that term I treat them differently.

Something that we have less control over would be working along with parents who refuse to treat them like adults. One of the students I advised came in with his father. His father sat down across from me at the desk which forced his son into a corner chair. He then explained to me that he was there because "my son is not yet 18." He continued to talk to me like his son wasn't in the room and we were discussing legal issues. When ever I tried to talk to the student, he wouldn't look at me and always looked to dad to answer for him. It was very hard to treat him like an adult.

Of course the difference between us and Europe is cultural. During our pre-trip, how not to be insulting in Europe meetings, we were told that if we end up talking to any children, we should treat them the same way we treat adults. Many cultures believe that the transition from child to adult can be made over night. The child just has to reach a certain age, participate in a ceremony, or have some important event happen. In America we don't go from child to adult. We go from infant to terrible twos, to toddler, to child, to adolescent, to young adult, to adulthood. Then we still get to look forward to middle aged, over the hill, and retiree. I've watched as society has embraced the term tween. I was never a tween. I may have been a preteen, but if so I didn't know it. Why do we have so many stages?

When I was in psychology* the leading theorist in cognitive development was Piaget. He presented 4 stages of development. According to his theory we begin the final stage as a preteen and we may never finish that development. The theories that I know of that have been adapted from or are related to Piaget usually have somewhere between three and five stages. Six stages wouldn't surprise me, but I don't think I have ever seen it. Since studying that I have learned about the psychological process that students may go through when faced with certain situations, but not any continual psychological development of students. I am not claiming that there is not any more brain development. What I'd like to point out is that I haven't heard of any more so I am assuming that most people haven't heard of any more. Why then, is society accepting these different stages? Are they being presented to us by psychologists, or are they being presented to us by advertisers. Did the people who develop and market Bratz realize how desperately eleven and twelve year old girls want to be thirteen and create the classification tween to market directly to them.

I'm generally in support of direct marketing and audience targeting, but we have added a slew of transitions to the growing up process. Are we making it easier or harder to grow up. I understand that if you transition from child to adult over night you could could be given a load of responsibility that you are not prepared for and the expectations can be daunting, but are baby steps making it better? Or are they just making it easier to put off accepting those responsibilities? Is it making it harder for adults to give those responsibilities? That may feed right back into my generation's work ethic. We still have stages of growing to transition through so we haven't been given responsibility. Since we haven't had responsibility, we don't care about it or know how to handle it.


*Disclaimer: I have not studied much psychology. As an undergrad I only took a general education psychology course, and as a graduate I've taken a student development course that had some psychology theories in it, but it was not a psychology based course. I think it is fair to believe that my psychology education is at or above the American average so I think it is enough to be applicable to my topic. I do welcome any additional information because I find this topic fascinating.