By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’m pondering this throw-away comment, something I’ve heard countless times before and never really thought about. What do we really mean when we say someone isn’t ‘acting their age’?

In
effect, we’re judging whether their actions are ‘normal’ and
‘acceptable’—as compared to the majority of people of that same
chronological age in our society. But our assessments are neither true,
nor false. They are simply our perspective, our evaluation, of what we
perceive.

In many cases, our assessments have nothing to do
with age—they simply mask our judgments of the individual’s social
behavior or growth (either emotional, mental, physical

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