One of my favorite questions to ask coaching clients is, “When did you become an adult?”

Louise Aronson, Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, writes if we live a full life, we will experience childhood, adulthood, and elderhood.

Adulthood is that expansive gap between childhood and elderhood.

Defining childhood is hard. Is it biological from birth to puberty through adolescence? Is it a social construct? Is it a lack of power that adults possess? After all, Santa Claus is an adult, and he’s watching you!

Boundaries from childhood to adulthood are blurred. Some cultures have rites of passage where a young person becomes an adult with more responsibilities and privileges. Turning sixteen in the United States and getting a driver’s license is a stepping stone to adulthood. At eighteen, you get to vote and join the military. At twenty-one, you can consume alcohol legally.

What does it mean to become an adult? The Oxford Dictionary says that an adult is a state or condition of being fully grown or mature. That leads to questions of what is fully grown. What is fully mature? Some say we spend our lives “becoming adults” and perhaps never reach that stage. Others say “the child” remains in us and is shown when our childhood wound gets triggered.

Do you become an adult when you recognize what you can and cannot control?

Do you become an adult when you accept yourself just as you are with all your warts, scars, and imperfections?

Do you become an adult when you stop comparing yourself to others and stop caring and worrying about what others think and say about you?

Do you become an adult when you become mindful and recognize what you consume?

Do you become an adult when you recognize the communities you are a part of and how they impact your life positively or negatively?

Do you become an adult when you focus on needs, wants, and the discipline to handle them?

Becoming an adult was when I had to get serious about the rest of my life. It occurred after my divorce. Counseling challenged me to consider who I was, what I was, and how I wanted to be experienced by others. For the first time, I had to look at myself in the mirror and ask, What’s my purpose in life? What are the values I want to hold myself accountable to? What habits were serving me well versus what habits not serving me well? I began to think about the bigger picture and the future. It was more than being financially independent, being in a committed relationship, and becoming a parent.

I don’t believe there is any one single event, but I do find a series of connected events that lead to this transition from child to adult.

When I ask this question, women tend to reveal they became adults earlier than men. This may be because the female brain develops earlier than the male, and female genetics are more potent.

Pretty much at every age, women seem to survive better than men. In extremely old age, the gap between the sexes becomes a glaring one.  – Steven Austad, Chair of Biology, University of Alabama

So, when did you become an adult?