When Does Childhood End?
Childhood lasts as long as you’re having fun and enjoying the little things in life. Make sure to make the most of things because you do indeed really live once.
March 17, 2022
Throughout the years, the window for childhood has steadily decreased. The time for relaxation, carelessness, and fun has slowly but surely been dwindled over the years.
So here lies the question- when does childhood actually end? Is it when a person can no longer fit into the kid’s swing set? Or is it when a person finally gets their driver’s license? As a kid, the main goal is to grow up and have a good and successful life, by whichever standards that each individual feels is success. Parents always advise their children to take safer routes that allow them more financially stable jobs while teachers in schools often ask their students “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
However, how are students supposed to know what they want to do with their lives, especially at such a young age? As a child, many choose mentors to look up to in order to help them navigate through the turbulence’s of life. Then comes high school, when the time for a pupil to start planning out their lives. At Yorba Linda High School (and at many other schools) the freshman year career’s course offers a career’s class that is supposed to aid the students in figuring out what career they want to pursue in the future. This class gives a small glimpse into each career path and allows for the individual to research into that given career.
“I feel like planning for the future is kind of scary in the aspect where everyone expects us, teenagers that are really nothing more than teenagers, to have our entire life laid out. I feel like I need more time to be able to experience the little things in life in order to find out what I really want to do, and the stress of being forced to figure it out is a lot more overwhelming than it needs to be.” — Hayden Lee
So at the ripe age of fourteen years old, teenagers are expected to plan out their entire lives and have an understanding of what their future passion is to be. The future is coming at a rate much faster than expected. Living in the moment and experiencing life is being threatened by thinking so far ahead in the future. “I feel like planning for the future is kind of scary in the aspect where everyone expects us, teenagers that are really nothing more than teenagers, to have our entire life laid out. I feel like I need more time to be able to experience the little things in life in order to find out what I really want to do, and the stress of being forced to figure it out is a lot more overwhelming than it needs to be,” shares Hayden Lee (10). For many students at Yorba Linda, the stress of planning ahead is weighing down many shoulders.
So to answer the question, childhood ends when a person no longer enjoys the little things in life. Childhood is a concept that lasts as long as the desire to still have fun is there.
