Didn’t read the article. Don’t need to. I got the gist of it from the comments posted in this thread.
Everyone is different. What leads up to the (magical?) 18th year is also different. I have one older brother. When I was 14 and he was 18, our mother (who had raised us by herself after our parents divorced when I was 3 due to my father’s then-drug addiction) died after and 18 month battle with cancer. For my brother, who had moved out of the house 3 years earlier due to discipline problems (partying, drinking, etc.), he was already an adult, and living with our father. For me, I was pretty well devastated. The only parent I had ever really known was gone, and I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to deal with it. It probably set me back quite a bit emotionally and directionally, but also paradoxically probably also helped/forced me to grow up in ways that most 14 year olds probably don’t have to. In terms of life skills, I had already been doing laundry, washing dishes, etc. since I was 7 or 8 years old, so that didn’t change, and neither my mother or my father could really cook, so that didn’t change either.
But probably because of things like this and other family issues, my teenage years and early 20s were not quite as I’d thought they would be. I got a job by 16, but quit within 3 months after my father told me we’d be selling the house and moving away (it had too many bad memories of the wife he was in the middle of divorcing at the time). I also struggled with various long-term medical problems that had forced me to un-enroll from school for an extended period while I underwent extensive painful medical testing and treatment (the specialist I saw actually told me that I should’ve come to see her about a month beforehand, as the particular sickness I was suffering from can be fatal if not treated and diagnosed in time; whew!). I went through school for several more years as I struggled with juggling illnesses, jobs, and completing the classes needed to transfer to a four year university before finally succeeding a few years behind schedule due to all of these problems, but I finally DID do it and once I was out of the house/state, I excelled, completing a 4 year degree in 1 year and 9 months.
I don’t write any of this to excuse myself, as I’m sure there were some times I really was lazy, but I am very lucky, nay, blessed that I had (some) family who understood that I was progressing toward a goal, but needed some help and time to deal with some things that would be really hard for someone of any age to deal with. If you’ve got a kid who needs similar help, try to do what you can to encourage them to progress in their lives while recognizing that the timetable of life can get a little unpredictable at times, and it’s always better to be flexible for the sake of helping your kid have a successful life despite their obstacles than to be inflexible because the law and wider society has attached some mythical power to a more or less arbitrary number.
