What’s a moment when you realized you were officially an adult?
My immediate answer: When I am officially declared by the authority that issues my adult identity card. But does an identity card or passport make me—or anyone else—truly realise that we are adults?
Adulthood has two faces: an adult-aged person with neither intention nor ability to take up adult responsibility, or a child-aged person who has already discharged adult responsibilities during childhood.
For traditional Chinese families, parents and grandparents never consider their children or grandchildren as adults—even when their children live to ninety-nine. In their hearts, there is only one identity for their children: children. So buying property for them, starting businesses for them, or even settling their debts are commonly seen.
In other words, age does not automatically turn one into an adult. Some GenZ adults by age classification still live with their parents, paying no rent or mortgage, contributing nothing for food or daily necessities, or even doing no laundry of their own.
Love covers all wrongs, but excessive love breeds lazy, irresponsible descendants—making it difficult for age-qualified children to ever become true adults.
In the city I dwell, children in middle-class families are raised in a bubble. Even when they reach eighteen—officially regarded as adults—many remain dependent on their parents for living expenses and financial support. Some parents even remortgage their own homes to finance new houses for their adult children.
Perhaps I was less fortunate, for I became independent before turning the adult age. Growing up in a hot kitchen and piercing through bone-cold wind, I matured much faster than others my age—giving me a competitive advantage in all my dealings. Moreover, Scripture guides me to live wisely: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”
But for those children who live in cushioned families—is it a blessing or a curse for all concerned: parents, children, and society as a whole?
Scripture says: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Proverb 22:6). If parents spoil their children, they cause life to suffer—both theirs and their children’s.
May this poem remind us of the grave consequence of over-indulging children.
—
✨The Unseen Temperature✨
A child raised in a greenhouse never leaves its glass—
Knows not of temperature, only of the air-conditioned pass.
The kitchen’s summer blaze, the freezer’s winter sting—
These are the grounds where a poor boy learns to swing.
A trifle ache—the greenhouse child’s deep wound;
A mountain of hardship—the poor boy’s strength, unhewn.
Same kind, yet different makers shape each frame—
So different wares bear different names.
Who sees no temperature, through life remains a product, sealed—
Who sees the temperature, in the wilderness has truly healed.
—✨
en yan hua fang 