When Being Responsible Coincides with “Growing Up”

This entry is actually titled “When Being Responsible Coincides with “Growing Up” and Why I Think That’s Bad”, but that sounded a little negative to hit you with from the get-go. So I’m hitting you with it from the post-get-go.

On the first visit with the new therapist the other day, I accompanied M in. Zhe wanted me to front the entire time, but it’shir therapy, not mine.

So as I listened to them talk, and M mentioned that zhe was starting to actually be hir own person, and was actively participating in hir environment and how cool that was (though zhe left out my hefty role in that, probably for the sake of less confusion), and the therapist said, “Well, that’s good, that’s a part of growing up…”

Wait wait wait… Who ever said anything about needing to grow up? This is so not about that. In fact, this is about hir being less grown up. Zhe has been more mature than the average twenty-five year old since before zhe was seven. Zhe learned how to interact with people, how to not be emotionally overbearing, which fork to use… Well, maybe not that, but you get my point.

This is about zhe being okay with being hir and having emotions. Come to think of it, I don’t think there’s a stage in life ascribed to that benchmark, most people just sort of enter life as themselves, with emotions and opinions…

Perhaps that’s something people take for granted.