At what age did you become an expert?

Same here, around 13 with my Mum, around 11 with my dad.
What did it cost me? a lot of rent… I was encouraged to move out and enter the big bad world at 17–18yrs old. (Damn it! If I was as smart as I thought I was, I could have gotten another couple of years cheap rent.)

I don’t remember me so much, but my kids were certainly 13 for 2 of them and 14 for the youngest.

I think I knew it all at about 13–15. I certainly remember arguing with my dad about a multitude of things he of course knew nothing about…

Payback is hell. I now have a 17 year old who is an expert on everything.

I became a sexpert at seventeen, never looked back :¬)

I have always been an expert!

Ha! Still working on it.

If I had even had a brainfart about trying to come off being a teenage know-it-all on my guardian? She’d’ve backhanded me into the 24th century, and no mistake.

Mine kicked in at about 14, and it never really cost me anything. I got in trouble at school a few times, but I never cared about that. Plus, I could usually get myself out of it. I did really piss off my father once, but it turned out I was right and he was wrong. College shut the gene back down and attempted to replace its function with actual expertise.

Mine also was around 13, at which point I think I just caused a lot of problems if I didn’t get what I wanted like throwing tantrums, which my mother hated, and also did I mention I was the 3rd child but also considered an accident as my siblings are 12 and 9 years older than me, at which stage my father was working 100% of the time and my mother was the parent who looked after everything. I’m pretty sure they just couldn’t wait for me to grow up, so rather than argue with me they just let me have it my way. Like when I said at the age of 17 “I want to move out with my boyfriend”. I was completely shocked at that time that it was so easy as they even made a days trip of it and dropped me off before ritual Saturday shopping like a lost puppy to a shelter…years laters I’m actually a little distgusted at the lack of parental advice, and always the ok learn my own way, but I can also see now years later the kind of character flaw my mother has and I hate saying it but she totally has a give up attitude which I think in part is why I got away with what I did.

I think I became aware around the age of two :-/
Then the tantrums started, right up until the age of twenty-twenty one…….

I first started realizing my intellectual superiority to everyone on the planet at 12, but the implications didn’t really manifest until I was 13.

Yeah, I went through a “No problem”, “Don’t worry about it” stage around 14 that probably drove everyone nuts. I had it covered. I didn’t need any help.

While this annoyed and bemused my father (and Aunts), my mother was all too happy to leave me to my own devices. As a result, I soon ended up doing everything for myself.

A true expert is smart enough to know their limits and know when to ask for help, but knows enough on their own to not need to do so often.

While I still defer to some people (like my loving wife) when it comes to areas where my skills are a little shaky even in my late-30s, I would have to say that I am not much more of a general expert on life than I was when I was 8. I knew numbers well enough to make a household budget before I was old enough to get a job, and by age 11, I could make a decent hollandaise sauce (in other words, I was far from incompetent in the kitchen… and had acquired a weakness for Eggs Benedict).

However, it never caused a rift or cost me much except for the occasional person accusing me of being a know-it-all.

I tried to find a age that I thought I was a expert at something , anything and I still haven’t reached that age yet, and I’m almost 56 years old .
We weren’t allowed to act out , talk back , or think we knew it all , we knew a paddle would be waiting if we even tried .
We had the fear of dad in our home !

Good question , sure made me think

It was yesterday or maybe the day before and what a feeling :)

@aprilsimnel If I had even had a brainfart about trying to come off being a teenage know-it-all on my guardian? She’d’ve backhanded me into the 24th century, and no mistake. Well, the government has rendered that sort of control criminal these days. All you can do is try to take away the cell phone, game system, etc if you happen to be able to afford that for the child in the 1st place. Otherwise it will be the government that will later “smack them into the middle of the week after next”, they can drop the hammer where they have taken it away from parents.

@Meego _ but I can also see now years later the kind of character flaw my mother has and I hate saying it but she totally has a give up attitude which I think in part is why I got away with what I did._ In a subconscious way do you believe you are like the drill sergeant that berates the cadet to spark some “gumption” out of them? Or (no insult implied) were you just being a brat?

@Pattijo We weren’t allowed to act out , talk back , or think we knew it all , we knew a paddle would be waiting if we even tried. As I said to @aprilsimnel those glory days for parents have long been taken by the government, they want parents powerless to they can do the smack down and keep the prisons filled up. Have to have some rally cry to put out to the votes and the prison union to keep employed. If you have no iPod, game system, cell phone, computer, etc that can be taken from you what is the down side of sassing your parents, what are they going to do to you? They can’t even legally feed you only water and soda crackers.

@Hypocrisy_Central Glory days my ass! Granted, kids today are a little spoiled because parents can’t figure out how to discipline a kid other than beatings so many of them go unpunished, but my mother managed to find a way to crank out a decent, law-abiding kid without ever smacking me. Or are you saying that my mother was a better parent than damn near every other parent ever?

@Hypocrisy_Central I guess I should state a lot of my issues as a child were caused from a brain injury from a baseball bat when I was 5. After that things never quite made complete sense the injury caused emotional, memory, and anger issues which got worse 15 years later when I had a stroke. So I think my answer is no to the brat part and maybe? to the subconscious part although I don’t really know.

@jerv Or are you saying that my mother was a better parent than damn near every other parent ever? What I can say to that is IMO not knowing you or her while you were growing up is a culmination of you not being a little arrogant terror and open to responding to her creative ways to get her will done sans the spanking or the back of the hand. Not all kids are cut from the same cloth just as not every kid raised in the ghetto becomes a thung, dealer or prositute, every kid in the ‘burbs don’t avoid drugs and go onto Harvard. There is a big difference in corporal punishment and an all out beating. Some kids don’t take it serious until they taste a little belt leather. If severe punishment never work why not just give everyone life no matter how many they have killed and axe the death penalty all together.

@Hypocrisy_Central My mother-in-law tried that with my brother-in-law; she thought she could beat the ADHD out of him. He’s spent most of the last decade in prison. On the other hand, I can’t think of any of my well-adjusted acquaintances that were so much as spanked.

Maybe it’s just a matter of my life experiences and observations being different from others yet again but I have yet to see spankings work better than reason. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve lost allowance and privileges before; it isn’t like my childhood was punishment-free. However, it didn’t take slaps, spanks, or grounding to make me realize that my life was so much easier and better when I followed the rules. And if there is a kid that doesn’t take it seriously until they taste belt leather, I never met one.

@jerv My guess is that your mother-in-law’s trouble was that she was using the wrong tool for the wrong job.
The trouble with using reason is that not all children are reasonable.