The Ages of Man, According to Your Mum

My opinion and observations on necessary Stages of Growth

1) Infancy:
small people learn trust. (sometimes WHO to trust, and how much)

2) Early Childhood:
children are basically civilized according to their culture (wash your hands, share, be nice to people)

3) Childhood Through Puberty :
fill the encyclopaedia
(kids who don't learn arithmetic may still learn all the Pokemon powers, they'll fill the memory with something)

4) Adolescence:
formulate, re-evaluate and/or solidify personal value system
(mom was right about honesty, but I don't agree with her political views)

5) Late Adolescence to Early Adulthood:
prepare for working life or career

6) Career and/or Raising a Family:
Not much time for anything else here. These are high performance years. Let's hope you prepared well

7) Mid Life:
Resolve issues from childhood.
(Time to resolve short-comings of your early family life etc,
and resolve body image: resign yourself to the body (and hair, and knee problems, etc) you have,
OR finally get in shape.
Some Gerontology doctors call this "the adolescence of old age, That is: the health you are in during middle age, stays with you to old age. If become ill-tempered in middle age, it will stay with you to old age.

8) Active Retirement: kind of like play time for traditional parents who had children young and didn't play then haha. Still have health, more flexibility in time, hopefully mobility.

9) Dependence Again. You need assistance at least to some degree. (if there were trust issues set aside during adulthood, they will certainly re-surface here. I saw this in the assisted living when I was there)

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What I have noticed is
A) if you don't finish one stage, you seem to stay stuck in it. We all know people who have no other way to deal with problems than to drink, as though stuck in the teenager stage. Or those don't learn to spell, (for example), in school, and still can't spell as adults (unless they make a concerted effort, and some do learn later.)
This is also why adult education is so important. Some people need and want to finish their education, but it really crowds the career/family stage

B) If there are unresolved issues from earlier stages they will persist in the person until dealt with.
(eg, A bad experience in childhood remains in the memory. That issue re-surfaces from time to time in the person's life, causes a crisis, then "goes away" again. It seems to cycle like that until resolved.)

C) "once a man twice a child" See #9 above. Does this mean there's something critical about childhood that we absolutely must learn? So important that we need to go back and re-learn it before we meet Our Maker?

D) After enough years have passed, we do not remember our parent's views on education or politics, we only remember if they loved us.
If you were raised by grandparents or extended family, this is still true.