Dressing Up for a Lifetime Role

When I was a little girl, I loved playing with my brother’s cars and trucks. I would build roads and towns in the front driveway. When my best friend and I would put on plays for the neighborhood, I was ok with playing the male roles because my mother always styled my hair into a pixie-cut. But what I really enjoyed the most was putting on dress-up clothes and playing house with my dolls. In reality, I did as all children do--I played with whatever I had available.

I learned the roles and moral compasses of my family members and our community by watching what they said and did. I assimilated what I saw into my own character formation. I developed who I was to become in society from the people in my life. This did not happen overnight. There were often bumps in the road. It took time and patience. More importantly, it took a natural physical development to be capable of any decision-making.  

Children have a limited range of knowledge from which to draw conclusions. They do not have well-rounded thought processes. They are not capable of forming complex decisions that some terribly misguided adults seem to expect.

Parents and society play a crucial role to educate and give time for a child to grow and learn how to formulate decisions adequately. The brain is not fully formed until the early twenties. Most psychologists agree that adult maturity levels are rarely reached before twenty-five; if at all for some.

Age does not equate with adulthood. There are many immature thirty-, forty-, and fifty-year-old’s who never learned the tools necessary to achieve emotional and intellectual maturity. They may never have had those socially and intellectually appropriate adult role models to guide them.

Childish impulses and fads are best bypassed for healthier alternatives. Instead, follow a well-developed psyche--for thought-ful consideration of your choices will rarely lead to regrets or harm to yourself or others.

Reaching developmental milestones, intellectual capacity, and emotional control are key to making informed and rational decisions that drastically and permanently affect one’s life, both physically and societally.