You’re always someone’s child until you become someone’s parent.
I voted other because I’m 76 and I don’t know the right answer.
When you decide your childhood is over.
When the kid next door wakes you up with his basketball and your first thought isn’t: “hey, let’s play some hoop!”
I didn’t really feel like an adult until I had my own kid. Even marriage felt more than a bit like playing house. I may have been externally adult, but mentally felt like a college student.
Kids made it really real. I’ve never been particularly ambitious or focused. On my report cards you probably could have copy/pasted “Very bright and engaged, but not working up to potential” for every teacher in every subject through the end of college. Before my first son was a year old, I’d suddenly started being very serious about Getting Shit Done, which is finally beginning to dig me out of the rut I’d carved for myself.
When you’re paying for your own insurance.
Just so you know, everybody under 65 is viewing you as a patronizing asshole. Good job on that, guess you probably don’t care since you are old and going to die soon anyway.
When you take full responsibility for your life.
Somewhere between 24-27. Maybe.
Though real talk, I was watching some old videos and by the time I hit about 13-ish I went from overly enthusiastic about every-little-day-to-day-thing, to normal person. I don’t remember anything changing or happening at that time, I think I just casually went from “child” to “kid”.
EDIT: wait a minute. op, it took your friends until junior year to stop wanting to be called a kid??? I remember complaining with my friends in about 4th or 5th grade about being called a “kid” when we were “totes waaay more mature than a kid”, lol.
I voted for 18 because it felt like the most reasonable answer.
In hindsight, I felt like an adult when I got my first full-time job and became financially independent which wasn’t until I graduated college. That was also when I realized at the age of 22, I wasn’t college-aged anymore, and I never would be ever again.
My thinking was similar: I stopped being/feeling like a kid when I put others’ lives before mine.
In my case, it was similar to yours, when I had kids of my own. But I can see a firstborn kid losing a parent and having to step in as a grown-up for their younger siblings. Or, really, any situation at any age when you have to realize you can’t just go mess around because you feel like it, that the well-being of others depends on you.