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Stanford Dean: You Need These 8 Skills to Qualify as an Adult
A lucky few among us are old souls who achieve a level of wisdom, compassion, and basic life skills when they’ve barely reached their teens. Others are hot messes who can barely manage to pay the electric bill on time into late middle age.
In short, 18 isn’t a magical number. Being a functional grown-up is something people manage at wildly different ages. And thanks to today’s trend towards helicopter parenting, many young people are achieving a state of mature competence later and later.
So what are the signs someone has made it? Is there a quick rundown of essential skills that indicate you’ve reached a basic level of maturity and can proudly and accurately proclaim yourself (or your kid) a functional adult? In a fascinating Quora response, Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former Stanford dean and the author of How to Raise an Adult, offers just such a list.
Not only does she outline the following eight essential skills that every true adult should have down cold, she also delves into how parenting practices can hold young people back from mastering them. That makes her answer not just a handy way for young people to gauge their readiness for the real world, but also a thought-provoking read for parents as well.
