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Everyone grows up.

There are children growing up slowly, children growing up too fast, children not growing up at all.

Some of us grow up gradually, like a turtle walking a race, slow and steady, until all of a sudden we’re older and wiser and somehow sadder; this is the perfect way of growing up.

Some of us grow up very slowly, we do not lose the fabric of our childhood even after we’ve crossed eighteen or entered our twenties or found someone perfect for us to spend our lives with, some of us still don’t lose the streak of childishness.

Some of us, on the other hand, grow up way too fast, like a blink, like a supernova which is a star dying but in this case it’s the star of our childhood innocence and naivety that dies and in its place come ashes, rocks, splinters. Leftovers.

There are some who don’t grow up at all, but that’s sad and unfortunate and is kind of another way in which we grow up way too fast. By not growing up at all.

Welcome to the acute irony of life, of children growing up too fast.

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING POST MAY BE TRIGGERING TO SOME, BECUASE OF ITS DISCUSSION ON TOPICS SUCH AS CHILD ABUSE AND TRAUMA.

Children Who Grow Up Way Too Fast

Babies are the pure souls of the universe, sweet and kind and perfect. And then they’re brought into this society, this place where they learn many new things and hear others’ opinions and then create their own and then it all comes down at the end to what they do with the short, wild life that they’ve been given by their parents.

There’d come a time when they’d have to let go of the things rotting them in place and they’d have to come forth in the world and present themselves in front of the predators that roam the place, and they’d have to face taunts and jeers and things that will push them down.

But for now, they’re children. And sometimes they grow up too fast.

They’re pretty little children, and nothing in the world seems to be powerful enough to harm them, at least as long as they are standing with their parents and are having all the luxuries of life being presented to them on a silver platter.

At least, until something happens.

And the world is forced to witness children growing up too fast.

In this post I’ll tell you 7 instances in which I feel that children are being forced to grow up way too fast.

#1 Violence

Suppose you’re with your kid. Or suppose you are a kid yourself.

Now imagine yourself walking down a street and looking around at the beautiful places and giggling to yourself because this is beautiful, and then all of a sudden, you stop.

You see hatred in front of your eyes, some form of violence, some crime, some kind of abuse, and it surprises you because you had never seen this kind of thing ever before and now even as your parents are ushering you away, the gruesome, scary scene is all you can still see in front of your eyes.

And this is crazy because people aren’t supposed to fight. What are they even fighting for? Why are they hurting each other like this. You see no reason.

So, you ask your parent why that happened, what was the reason behind it, why does someone have so much hatred and envy and greed filled inside, and all your parents says is you’re too small and young and you’ll understand when you grow older.

What they don’t realize is that you’ve already grown up. That one moment seemed to fast forward the process of growing up and now you’re older and something inside you has changed.

That’s how children grow up way too fast.

#2 Childhood Trauma

Childhood trauma is really not a nice topic to talk about. Really not, because it’s so sensitive, and you have to tread carefully while talking to anyone who’s ever faced this in life.

I’m not going to talk pretending that I know everything about it, that I somehow can measure the amount of fear, and the innumerable mental or physical scars that it burns onto somebody.

All I can say about childhood trauma is that it is the worst kind of trauma, one where it feels like all kids around your age are free of this dooming oppression and it’s only you who has to face it and grow up with these awful memories hidden inside your mind.

A child who has faced trauma early in his or her or their life, can only become mature faster than others, can only grow up way faster than anyone else.

They’ll most of the times bottle up their feelings inside of themselves (which is not advised at all) and they’ll grow up with no support or comfort from any loved one relating to this.

#3 Financial problems

Suppose you’re with your kid, or suppose you are a kid yourself.

And the household you live in is loving and all, and you seem to be given everything, but in truth you aren’t.

13.4% or adults all over the world face poverty. 27.7% children face poverty.

This is not anything new, many children are so used to living in an impoverished household that they don’t seem to see any kind of unusual thing in it. It’s almost routine for them. It’s what they’ve got the hang of. Poverty.

Poverty, not getting enough food to eat, not getting even the basic needs of a human, not being able to experience the true joys of life, all of it forces a child to grow up way too fast.

A child, when no one else will look after him/her, will eventually be forced to looked after themselves.

#4 Emotional distance

Emotionally distant parents seem to be like normal parents too.

For anyone looking at them from outside, everything seems normal, the family, the children, the smiles, the hugs. But in the deeper roots of the family, it differs a lot from normal.

Emotionally distant parents are just what the name suggests—they seem withdrawn and foreign to their own kids and for some time the children are wary of this strange behavior, until they learn to get the hang of it and then nothing seems out of the ordinary whenever they are painting the perfect family picture for rhe living room mantel.

Children who are starving of love and care will eventually learn to depend on themselves for all emotional, mental and other assistance and there’d be one day or the other when they’ll grow up way too fast because no one treated them like a kid when they desperately needed it.

Here is a resourceful guide that tells how to heal from the scars of emotionaly unavailable parents.

#5 Living Online Lives

Another instance of kids growing up too fast are the way all of us today seem to be living online, fake lives. This didn’t have to be the case earlier but since technology has advanced to another different level, and even small kids have been allowed to use phones and social media sites, it is kinda expected to see children growing up too fast.

They build online lives and learn so many things in these online lives, these things of course, not always being good for them.

In these online lives children are exposed to so many horrors of life even before they are able to understand it. So they try to comprehend all this world of media as best as they can, and oftentimes they end up doing it wrong.

#6 Information dump

Suppose again that you’re wi6h your kid. Or suppose you’re a kid yourself.

And after a whole day of work, you sit down for dinner while the news plays in the background. Your child looks happy, playful, even energetic today. You’re happy to know this.

That smile can light up darkest rooms, you think, staring at your child’s beam. And then suddenly it’s like someone jinxed it, because the next second the newsreporter is talking about the war and showing photographs from the war prone areas and of people becoming homeless and injured and people searching for food and water.

You lose your appetite.

Unbeknownst to you, your child has lost their smile and the glint in their eyes. With the huge variety of news available out there nowadays, I feel it safe to say that after undergoing this big expressive information dump, children are surely struck with an existential crisis.

They might be looking at the climate change and wondering why it’s happening and why the old generations are doing this—why are they persistent on making the earth unfit for human survival.

You try to then switch the channel to another, but the images of the war crimes and the hungry people and the pollution and dust has already done its imprint onto your child’s brain. This form of negative information dump, in one instance, though might make a child tougher and more prepared for the future, but in another case, it might have a downhill effect by forcing a kid to grow up way too fast.

#7 Pressure from Society

Excessive pressure from parents, peers, teachers, society, even from their own expectations forces children to grow up way too fast.

They’ve got this pressure to succeed, to do the best in everything they do, or someone somewhere might end up being disappointed in them. It is this kind of pressure from society that forces children to take up loads of responsibilities even before they become capable enough to handle them.

Help A Child Who May Have Been Forced to Grow Up Too Fast

So, these were the seven instances of children growing up too fast and in this world where there’s already an overload of all these human evils and atrocities, anyone can see that many children go through this.

If you are, or know, one of those children who feel like they’re helpless and alone, and who are not willing to come forward and speak up, then maybe it’s your chance to help them now, to give them the childhood they deserved after all.

Tell someone, encourage them to speak up, or ask for help from someone you know might handle this correctly.

Childhood is a golden time of life, and we have to lend our share of help in such a way that no one has to grow up way too fast. You can change the world by helping someone else change themselves.

For those of you who are new to the blog, hello and welcome. We, Matsyaa Lyfe, exclusively spell life with a why. It’s just something we like to introduce ourselves with.

Check out our blog on this very topic, of life and everything within. If you, however, want to change the world, start reading this this blog series on My Formula for Changing the World.