#mental age

[zebulontheplanet]

Just your reminder that mental age isn’t real and hurts people with ID and developmental disabilities. Please stop saying it’s real.

[autistic-answers]

i know many people are against mental age, but am I okay to use it for myself? im autistic and I never really mentally went over a certain age

How you think about yourself inside your head is no one's business but your own. When it comes to talking out loud or writing, it's usually best to try to do it in a way that doesn't push ableist narratives.

Today, I will explain why and also tell you what I do as someone who often does not feel like an adult.

Why don't people like mental age?

The theory of "mental age" is often weaponized against people with developmental disabilities, especially those with intellectual disability.

Non-disabled people tend to use mental age to limit the rights and opportunities of disabled people.

It encourages infantilization. For example, if someone is described as "mentally five years old," they may be denied opportunities to explore age-appropriate things, even if the person wants to do so.

It discourages human rights. If people declare a 30-year-old to be "mentally 11 years old," they might deny that person the right to marry or vote. This happens in real life.

It diminishes skills and experience. If you call a 50-year-old "mentally a child," it ignores their decades of experience and time to grow their skills. Many disabled people have "spiky skill profiles," meaning that we may have impairments in some areas while being more skilled in others. But claiming someone is mentally a child/teen means ignoring all that.

People often don't even try that hard to be accurate. When I was in my late teens or so, some rando armchair-diagnosed me with a mental age of 5. And saw me through that highly limited lens.

I don't endorse the idea of mental age. I believe disabled people deserve equal rights and shouldn't be held back from trying age-appropriate things if we want to try. (We might need more help, and some things might be out of reach, but preconceptions shouldn't limit us. Like, I should be allowed to vote.)

I started a wiki article on intellectual disability and I included info on levels of disability. Many articles used "mental age" as a comparison. But I did not. I said "similar skills to this age" and then I clarified that each person will have stronger skills in some areas than others.

Disabled teens and adults should not have dignity and agency taken away by people assigning us a mental age. But this happens a lot. Not just historically, in the present too.

This is why so many push back against the idea of mental age.

My own feelings

I am in my late 20s and I will be 30 before too long. I know I write well. But sometimes, I feel like a 12-year-old who is being forced to act like an adult.

This is partly because I don't live independently. It would be unsafe to try. I live like a preteen (or something like that), microwaving meals and cleaning my room a little but not cooking or managing my own money. I need adult help for most of the "grown-up stuff." I work part-time because full-time is too hard.

Working a job feels weird. Seeing my similarly-aged cousin comfortably do adult things that are too hard for me feels weird. Knowing that my peers are interested in "adult" things like houses and skincare while I still like toys and comics feels weird. Seeing how the people on TV celebrate 30th birthdays and knowing how different it is from my idea of fun feels weird.

But if I were to call myself mentally 12 years old, it would ignore the fact that I am good at writing and coding. My skills and the wisdom I've learned would be erased. Even if I am nothing like most people in their late 20s.

How do I honor my feelings and my skills at the same time? I say "I often feel like a 12-year-old forced to play grown-up."

This describes my feelings without implying that I am not a real adult who doesn't deserve adult rights. I am a developmentally disabled adult. I can feel like a preteen while still deserving adult opportunities and choices.

tl;dr: The concept of mental age is often used to restrict people's freedom and rights. So I don't think we should encourage other people to think that way. But it's okay to say "I don't feel like an adult." An "I feel" statement can honor your perceptions without betraying your rights.

[rosedawolf]

What is Roses Mental Age? She doesn't act like shes 40.

I actually explained this in a post before.

[oiledup-twatx0]

I’m no no longer 15💪🏾/j

[pratchettquotes]

His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world-weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.

Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

[blakescrazyblog]

Okay, we all know this is wrong.

We all know my mental age is like, 4. At Best.

[ayyy-imma-ninja]

You may of answered this question already, (and if so, please forgive me for asking!)

But I was wondering how old Sun and Moon are in your fairy AU? I know that they are a few centuries old (that came as a SHOCK, by the way), but I was wondering how old they are mentally

I’ve always imagined them as quite young, but I don’t really know! I’m just curious :p

They may be centuries old, but they are still rather young for fairies!

Sun and Moon are quite young, mentally. It feels like just due to experience, Moon is more mentally older than Sun. He's spent a lot of time protecting Sun and being both sword and shield. But the twins harbor a lot of innocence, still. Even Lunar.

There is one who is the youngest mentally amongst the fairies, though.