The Value of Being Immature

I am a 39 years old woman. I have often, however, heard how I am naive, or child-like, or even immature. For the longest time, I resented being told these. It’s amazing how our perspectives can change with a little self-reflection.

It occurred to me one day that it is just as easy for me to be an adult as it is for me to be a child. Since I believe that no one thing can exist without its opposite (e.g. we know sadness because we know what happiness feels like, we know light because we’ve seen dark), it started to make sense that with being mature, we are naturally childish at times.

Thinking about it, I have always been able to develop relationships with kids. Indeed, when I started my current job, my clients were children for the most part. Out of 48 clients, I had – at one point – only 2 young adults. All the rest were between the ages of 4 and 10 years.

My child-like nature is what I use when I connect with my younger clients. I maintain confidentiality even with a 4 years old child (although I do tell them that I can help them tell something to their caregiver if they want). I play games with them, join them in their excitement at the little things, and – perhaps most importantly – ask parents not to consider behaviors as “bad” but rather as exploratory. 

Exploration is one of the ways we learn. We try something out, if it leads to good consequences we keep doing it. If it doesn’t, we stop. Classic operant conditioning, right? It’s something we do throughout our lives, the difference being that we are capable of thinking before taking action as adults while, as children, we act and then learn from the consequences.

That doesn’t mean that we are always insightful as adults, though – we’ve all attempted something in our lives that hasn’t led to good consequences and decided not to do that again. After all, we are not omniscient, we can’t predict everything in the world. So, sometimes our explorations are much like those that kids do. Yes, sometimes we are ALL childish.

Going back to my belief that one thing can only exist because we know of its opposite, we often know we are being mature if we look at times when we were childish. The difference, however is HOW we look at it. What if we looked at our previous behavior without judgment? Not with “I can’t believe I ever thought that!” but rather with a sense of “well, that was I thought at the time” or “I learned something new from that”? And with the acceptance that taking action and facing negative consequences of it can happen again, and that would be OK?

Essentially, being childish isn’t a bad thing. Because it is a part of who we are – we had to be a child to get to where we are today. Valuing the child in us doesn’t negate our maturity – it adds to it.