We are all Adults here.

The irony of the honor system or the default assumption that “we are all adults here” is that it creates plausible deniability the moment it’s invoked. Once everyone is cast as an adult, emotional immaturity is presumed to vanish from the room. As if declaring adulthood erases the presence of insecurity, ego, or bad faith. The very assumption becomes a shield not of actual maturity, but the performance of it. You end up with emotional children in adult bodies, cloaked in titles, degrees, or job descriptions. The honor system becomes less about actual integrity and more about maintaining appearances. People are free to act out their unresolved wounds so long as they do it in a tone of professionalism or under the banner of "mature discourse." The assumption of adulthood becomes a costume, not a condition.

In its most idealistic form, an adult is someone who can be trusted with children. Not just to protect them physically, but to hold their minds, their questions, their fears with gentleness and clarity. To be trusted with children means being able to regulate your emotions when theirs are overwhelming, to meet their chaos with calm. It means telling the truth in a way they can carry honest but not crushing. It requires resisting the urge to dominate when uncertainty makes you feel small and instead choosing patience over power. It means modeling accountability rather than simply demanding obedience. And above all, it means prioritizing their sense of safety over your own comfort, even when that comfort is threatened by their messiness, their questions, or their pain. This requires emotional maturity the kind that isn't loud or self-congratulatory, but quiet, consistent, and earned over time. It's the maturity to pause instead of react, to listen without needing control, and to stay when things get uncomfortable. Emotional maturity means knowing the difference between a boundary and a wall, between guidance and domination. It means recognizing that children aren’t problems to solve or extensions of your ego, but whole people becoming. In its most idealistic form.

What we have instead are adults in the sense of marriages, mortgages, and mechanics people who have checked all the boxes of adulthood but lack the emotional maturity that gives those roles depth and meaning. They pay bills, raise children, and show up to work, but crumble when asked to take real accountability. Not the performative kind, but the hard kind the kind that admits harm, holds complexity, and changes behavior. They've aged, but they haven’t grown. They’ve inherited the structures of adulthood without embodying its ethics and this is the central struggle with it all today. Adult bodies trapped in childish thinking. We know who to blame but we insist we are victims of something and blind to how we contribute.

And that is the mark of childish thinking the inability to self-reflect and take accountability. It’s not the lack of knowledge or experience that defines immaturity it’s the refusal to look inward. The need to always be right. The instinct to blame outward. The unwillingness to say, “I was wrong, and I want to do better.” That is the crux of childish thinking, no matter the age, the salary, or the resume. Without self-reflection and accountability, adulthood is just theater. A costume with no core. A windsock on a used car lot, populated by used car salespeople in knock off suits and discount branded shoes selling cheap debt with high interest rates.

In a world of remotely mature adults a man who mocked a disabled reporter called a woman a “fat pig” and refused to release his taxes would not have been elected to president of the United States. The first time but that is the politics of dysregulated children. The lizard brain meets collective orphan psychology, and you get the toxic version of little orphan Annie.

The toxic version of Little Orphan Annie is what happens when unresolved childhood trauma meets unchecked adult power. “The sun will come out… or else” becomes the anthem of blind optimism warped into entitlement a refusal to sit with discomfort, demanding instant gratification or a scapegoat. Daddy Warbucks isn’t a rescuer anymore; he’s a brand. Power isn’t earned through care, it’s bought, marketed, and sold back to the desperate as salvation. The orphan is no longer innocent she’s weaponized. Victimhood becomes currency. “I suffered” transforms into justification for cruelty, not compassion. It’s still a hard-knock life, but now it’s got a Twitter account grievance is amplified, not healed, and every critique is recast as persecution. “Tomorrow” isn’t a promise anymore it’s a threat, a demand for reward regardless of the damage done today. In this world, every adult is either a villain or irrelevant. Authority is distrusted unless it flatters ego. Maturity is mocked, nuance dismissed, tantrums rewarded. The musical still plays loud, but the message is rotten pageantry over principle, patriotism and leadership reduced to hollow lyrics while the stage quietly burns.

Appropriate adults don’t flinch when things get messy they lean in. They don’t gaslight reality to protect their comfort. They name the harm, own their part, and stay in the room when the apologies need to be made. Appropriate adults don’t need to win the argument they want to understand the damage. They don’t confuse dominance with leadership, or silence with peace. They ask better questions instead of demanding easier answers. They know their power and use it to protect not to punish. Appropriate adults make space for pain without needing to fix it or flee from it. They sit with the grief, the guilt, the growing pains, and they don’t make that someone else’s burden to carry. They break cycles, not scapegoats. They listen. They adjust. They evolve. Not because it earns them points, but because that’s the whole damn point.