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Effective Age

Watched Riding in Cars with Boys recently and found more than a few epiphanies there. The one thought that stayed with me for several days was one about the effective mental age of a household. This is not a standard concept but something that the movie got me thinking about. There was this scene where Bev and her son Jason have an argument about who has it worse - he has his litany of issues and she has hers. 

They each try to outdo the other until Bev tells Jason that they are team and he contradicts her by saying he is the kid and she is the mother - so infact they are not a team. While my circumstances were nowhere as dire as Bev's but I was single mom and this notion of pulling in the same direction as a team was very much my operating model. I did not hesitate to explain this to J when she was a kid - we work together so things go well for us. I each do our part and do it well. 

Unlike Jason, J did not loudly protest the idea and demand her right to be a kid because she had for the most part the privilege of being one. However, it was far from the experience of a kid growing up in a stable, two parent household where the parental unit does not need the kid to pull their weight as part of the team effort. In Bev and Jason's household, the effective age was lower than it might have been in demographically comparable household where there were two parents. 

In a mentally "immature" household the conversations are different - the parent is expecting the child to act more responsible because they are at the wits end and can't go the distance alone. The child is resentful because the parent is not acting mature enough, asking for teamwork when there is no team. This is not the conversation that would be needed where the parental unit has the resources to do the job and therefore does not need the kid to pitch in.

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