September 24, 2021

"It's like a prison being an adult."

Here is the most brilliant child tantrum I have ever witnessed. 

This little girl is crying because she is realizing, deeply, that childhood will end, that she can only live on to become an adult, and from what she can tell, it's no good being an adult. It's like a prison! 

"I don't even want to be a teenager!... I just want to be a kid!" 
@kkellerusf0123

She had a full meltdown about having to be an adult one day. #kids #kidsoftiktok #adultingishard #meltdown

♬ Epic meltdown - KW Farms

57 comments:

Gahrie said...

A natural born Democratic voter.

Critter said...

Probably one of the most common feelings at some point of childhood. Some never do grow up. There are psychological terms for people like that ~ puer is one. The rest of us struggle to mature and try to reserve parts of us that can remain in touch with childhood.

Howard said...

The kid is doing an acting job manipulating the idiot mother who overindulges the child's natural instinct to cut corners.

typingtalker said...

Peter Pan - I Won't Grow Up

Sebastian said...

"It's like a prison being an adult."

But not as much as being a kid.

Tina Trent said...

90 years ago she’d be crying because her family hadn’t eaten in days. In fact, the same could be true in 1950.

At least childhood wasn’t invented until the 17th century. Then we had to go and screw it up by inventing the teenager.

wendybar said...

I don't blame her. Look what she has to look forward to. Getting called a white supremacist or RACIST just for being born. She has too much privilege already.

Achilles said...

She will just become a democrat voter and vote for people like Joe Biden.

He might be a rapist but she will never have to grow up and take responsibility for her stupid voting patterns.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

That is wild.

When I was a kid, I specifically recall I felt like childhood was the prison. So many restrictions. So many rules. I wanted to hurry up and be an adult so I could make the rules.


OT: Anyone have a facebook account?

If you do - try posting these labor statistics from the US Bureau of Labor
Statistics - found Here

Facebook will flag it as "Violates community standards". LOL. Actual facts don't fit the narrative at Facebook(D)!

"The AVERAGE hourly wage (excluding salaried supervisors and managers) has risen steadily over that same time is now $30.73/hour.

Less than 5% of Americans work for minimum wage and a great many of them work in tipped positions like waiters and casino dealers where tips can easily equal 2X - 4X the base hourly wage."

BG said...

I can relate. I was talking with a cousin not too long ago and said that I was so happy living on the farm with my animals and roaming the land wherever I wanted to go. My mom cooked all the meals (mostly homegrown everything) and baked homemade everything. I followed my dad whenever I was allowed. (Some things on a farm, even back then, were too dangerous for a five-year-old.) I had no clue about politics or prejudice or anything "woke." I did understand about death and why I would never see Grandpa again. (My parents didn't believe in sheltering us from that.) Then I turned six, had to start first grade and it was all down hill from there.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

It's like a prison being a child who is dragged across the world so her parent can show off his own devotion to classical education, or like a prison being a child whose existential tantrum is fed, mocked, and promoted so mommy can get lots of tik tok likes. Now that I think about it, childhood was more a prison to me than adulthood has been. I have erected prisons around me in adulthood but they were constructed from my childhood ruins.

glam1931 said...

I had a very similar crying breakdown with my Mom when I was about 8. It's a terrible thing to see your childhood ending. I saw what adulthood looked like and I wanted no part of it. I'm 66 now and I think she's absolutely right. I have done my best over the years to keep a childlike spirit.

Kai Akker said...

Mother!

Kid is articulate if she were not already primed with one or more of her lines. Carefully filmed. Mother wants to be a kid too... oooh.... Mother cries too.... oooh.... aargh.


Ask her what she is doing?

LordSomber said...

Fortunately, in 2021 she can live well into adulthood and still remain a child.

Roger Sweeny said...

Maybe this means a lot--that we live in a deeply unrealistic and overpromising society, with the message you should be able to be whatever they want--or perhaps she's just having a bad day.

tim maguire said...

I can't click on the link (a fairly common problem with Tik Tok), but your description reminds me of my daughter, who at 5 was already mourning her lost childhood.

Jersey Fled said...

I can remember just wanting never to grow up when I was about four or five. I had loving parents and lived across the street from my grandparents. It was a great place to be.

Now I wonder if there is anything better than being a grandfather.

rcocean said...

Doesn't everyone feel like that at some point? And then you move on. I think there was a Peanuts cartoon about Charlie Brown falling sleep in the backseat while your parents driving a car and knowing everything is taken care of and feeling completely safe.

Ice Nine said...

I wonder how long TikTok Mom practiced that with her.

R C Belaire said...

Difficult to argue with her observation. But the options are worse!

Temujin said...

That's the most pure and brilliant thing that young girl will every say in her entire life. Just brilliant. Such pure awareness of what she is losing and how hard and mixed up the rest of it is.

Her mom, on the other hand seems to be making fun of her tantrum. I'd not have had that reaction.

Curious George said...

My dad: "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about."

jaydub said...

Someone should tell her she can become a Democrat when she becomes an adult, which is a lot like a second childhood. So, no worry.

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

Today's theme is "neurotics, kids, and kids being neurotic while neurotics act like children".

Brought to you by Lucky Charms. "Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?"

wildswan said...

I used to tell my sisters that when we were adults we could eat candy all day and no one could stop us. So we had to learn things so we could get there. It worked at that age.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

Wait until she realizes what comes after adult.

robother said...

Hence the attraction of puberty blockers for pre-teen girls, and (witness the empathy of the mom here) their parents. Maybe it's not so much about being male as dread of being a teen-age girl and woman. But even as a boy I can remember the feeling that 12 was about as good as it gets.

Floris said...

When I read this, I first thought it was going to be about AOC and her performance on the House floor yesterday.

Aggie said...

Old Soul.

Mary Beth said...

One benefit of growing up is that you can go low contact or no contact with the parent who put videos like this on the internet for the world to gawk at.

MikeR said...

My granddaughter asked her parents, "Why did God have to make me a little child?"

BarrySanders20 said...

Bad parenting to film it. Abusive to publish it.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

The age may not be quite right, but this reminds me of a bit in Norm Macdonald's alleged memoir. He claims to remember what it was like to be one year old. You were praised constantly no matter what you did. How special, how cute. In fact you didn't have to do anything. Look at him. So great. In fact you could be in another room; they would remember how great you were, and go on about it. Then about age three, things change. You show up with a grape and it's not: how cute, a grape. It's more: where the hell did that grape come from? God knows where it's been--give it to me. And it dawns on you. They won't just stand in a circle praising you all your life. They'll criticize you sometimes.

Interested Bystander said...

Mom should have told her that when you're an adult your life is what you make of it. You can choose to make it a prison or you can choose to find joy wherever you go. Then she could have given the girl some examples of her own joy and fun in life.

Not everything is political. Every human fears growing up and taking on personal responsibility. Mom would have served the girl better by explaining why adulthood isn't a prison.

cubanbob said...

To follow up on Tina Trent's comment, childhood is a modern invention. In the not so distant past ( indeed in large parts of the world it isn't even past) child labor was the norm. That this kid could even have such an outburst is a testament to the advancement of civilization. For many of us over sixty five year olds commenters our grandparents were working at this girls age.



mtp said...

I feel her pain. Most kids go through this and they are not wrong.
Not a lot of upside to adulthood, but you do get to drive, have sex, and eat candy without asking anybody.

Yancey Ward said...

I can't quite escape the feeling this was completely staged and scripted, but if I let that suspicion go, I can appreciate the young lady's feelings- it is one I had at various stages of childhood, though I never melted down over it.

stutefish said...

I actually had the opposite experience at 16. Just got my driver's license and my first car (an old beater). Driving through town, and suddenly it hits me: There is literally nothing to stop me from just driving anywhere. It felt like all of the guardrails and safety nets in my had all dropped away at once. Everything from that moment onward would be entirely up to me. It was terrifying.

Ann Althouse said...

"She will just become a democrat voter and vote for people like Joe Biden."

She'll just grow up into a big bore who bullshits about politics at the slightest — or no — provocation.

Achilles said...

Ann Althouse said...

"She will just become a democrat voter and vote for people like Joe Biden."

She'll just grow up into a big bore who bullshits about politics at the slightest — or no — provocation.

That got a nerve.

LA_Bob said...

My reaction is similar to Temujin's.

Listen to her mom's tone of voice. Seems to me like a combination of boredom and disdain. I wonder if this woman tends to dump all her "adult" issues on the kid. Maybe she's bitched about her own problems enough the kid has formed a sense of what her future life holds.

But, I only know these people through a short video, so, what do I know?

gahrie said...

She'll just grow up into a big bore who bullshits about politics at the slightest — or no — provocation.

Because in this brave new boring world we live in under our Dear Leader, politics have no meaning, no effect and are boring.

I guess that's one way of rationalizing being irresponsible and hypocritical..."it's just too boring to deal with!"

Remember, no woman (or girl) must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.

Tank said...

When she is a teenager, will she thank her mom for putting this on the Internet?

Ann Althouse said...

"Listen to her mom's tone of voice. Seems to me like a combination of boredom and disdain."

Her mother says "I cry about that too."

What both the mother and the daughter know at that point is that the mother is stuck in the role of the adult and it's not fun. So when the mother says I'm sad about being in the predicament of adulthood, she is revealing to her daughter that it's bad being the parent in this relationship. YOU have got the good side of this, but you're crying too, because you realize it's only temporary. Message to the kid: Don't have children. It won't be fun for you and you're only making a new prisoner for the cruel Universe, and as soon as the kid figures that out, it won't even be fun for her anymore.

The crucial toxin seems to be the belief that the meaning of life is having fun.

Bruce Hayden said...

“I have done my best over the years to keep a childlike spirit.”

I think that the problem is women. They grow up. We really don’t. There is a saying that the difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys. My partner often, it seems, asks me why I act so juvenile. I make faces at her, use different voices. Etc. And it’s something like that - that I enjoy having, at times, a childlike spirit. New wonders every day. Keeps you young.

Achilles said...

Ann Althouse said...

The crucial toxin seems to be the belief that the meaning of life is having fun.

Awesome! Wisdom!

But it wont happen in a mob.

It takes individuals to make this step on their own. Which is why movements like Feminism are about destroying the individual and burying them in a mob of grieving whiners.

Maybe there is hope for feminism. First accept that meaning comes from suffering.

tim maguire said...

Curious George said...My dad: "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about."

We may have had the same dad. I would never cry or even complain in front of him. Nothing good would come of it.

Achilles said...

Bruce Hayden said...

“I have done my best over the years to keep a childlike spirit.”

I think that the problem is women. They grow up. We really don’t.

Biology for women is very different. Their reproductive needs are bound to a very rigid biological clock and they have a series of choices to face.

Being forced to make these choices causes maturation in some ways.

I think this is part or why women live longer.

cassandra lite said...

I wouldn't want to be an adult either if my model for adulthood was that mother. Who TF would film her daughter having a tantrum and post it for everyone to see? What TF kind of person would, for everyone to hear, tell her child that she, too, cries about being an adult?

Geezus, there are so many millions of people who just got older but never grew up.

PM said...

I remember, around the age of ten, and seeing what was going to happen and what would be expected of me, that the moment I was in was pretty good.

Narayanan said...

Critter said...
Probably one of the most common feelings at some point of childhood. Some never do grow up. There are psychological terms for people like that ~ puer is one.
----------
thanks Critter >>> I have always wondered about Puer[ile!]

>>> any connection to Bible : unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

mtp said...

@ Bruce Hayden,

You are correct.
I might know two men under 50 who act like adults.
In contrast, the daughter of a family friend is half of a lesbian couple, at 22, they both work full time, have their own place, and are set to get married.

I might raise an eyebrow at getting married that young, but if the alternative is living alone and playing video games well into middle age, then I'll go with the first one.

Josephbleau said...

Someone told be what his kid said after going from Kindergarten to first grade, " Well, I lost my sippy cup, I don't get to take a nap, I have to stay all day, it's hard. It's really hard now."

hawkeyedjb said...

I had a wonderful childhood, mostly because my father had a miserable one and hoped to watch his children enjoy their lives. We were almost-poor, but saw the world as a military family and moved to many interesting places. I loved my childhood; I think I've mostly wasted my adulthood, but it's been comfortable even if I constantly think of What Might Have Been...

Stephen St. Onge said...

        Interesting that so many of you claim to have felt the same.  It never occurred to me to be sad about the prospect of growing up.  Nor did either of my two brothers ever say anything like that, nor do I recall any child I knew in my youth expressing sadness at the idea of growing up.  The idea drew no emotional reaction whatsoever.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Cheer up sweetie! You'll be dead from climate change long before adulthood.

Jeff said...

Like my siblings, I couldn't wait to grow up enough to get away from my overbearing, depressed and ill-tempered Dad. It always felt like a black cloud was hanging over us.

My own children had much better childhoods. I played a lot with them and taught them the value of silliness. I've never understood why so many people seem to enjoy complaining and feeling bad about everything. If they don't enjoy it, why do they keep on doing it?