Are Adult Children Still “The Kids”?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi.

I’m Nancy Jackson from Aurora, Colorado.

Hi, Nancy.

Hi, I’m excited to talk to you. I listen to your podcast all the time. Just love it.

Oh, lovely. Thank you.

What’s on your mind today?

So I am what’s called a senior citizen, and it’s just really come to mind lately. My oldest son is going to be 50. And my other two, quote, children are just a few years younger than he is. And I obviously call them my children. But he’s 50 years old. It doesn’t fit.

So I looked up synonyms for children. And if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to just read what AI says children are. Kids, youth, juveniles, youngsters, teenagers, cubs, adolescents, chicks, babies, teens, kitties, kiddos, monkeys, Muppets, infants, younglings, toddlers, buds, bambini, bairns, welts, sprouts, etc., etc., etc. Kindergarteners, quarts, chats, etc., etc. I think it just goes on forever. Rugrats, mischief, twins.

Okay. No, no, no. A 50-year-old is none of that.

So then a grown child, and apparently this is a real issue because there were lots of different things on the Internet, but adult child, progeny, offspring, man child, although I have a daughter, so she would be the woman child, I guess. Descendant, successor, seon, offshoot, heir, offspring, progeny, issue, family, lineage, line, posterity, seed, fruit, or fruit of someone’s loins. I’m not calling my kids, excuse me, kids, any of those.

Not fruit of your loins?

Well, technically, yes. I’m not really interested in reminding people of that.

Right. So the difficulty here is that the word children has more than one meaning, and you’re not sure that when you talk about your children, people aren’t thinking of 5-year-olds instead of 50-year-olds.

Right. And what do your offspring say about it?

They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care.

You’re saying our language doesn’t have a term for it. And I guess my question for you, Nancy, is when did this start bothering you? Was it when they turned 21 and were of legal age?

No, no. Or was it later?

Not really. It’s been lately when they’re, you know, in their 40s and 50s. It’s like, okay, you know, they’re getting gray hair.

Yeah, maybe that should be the dividing line. You know, once you see those gray hairs come in, you need a different word.

But it really sounds like you’ve called them your kids and your children all your life, and they’ve called you their mother all of their lives.

Yeah, so there’s no really reason to change that. One of the features of language is that a lot of explaining is necessary. So getting that one-word term isn’t necessarily going to clear anything up. You’re probably still going to have to explain what you mean when you say the kids are coming over.

I guess so. We constantly have to restate and rephrase when we speak. So this is just another one of those cases.

Yeah. I mean, we have a 24-year-old living with us, and, you know, my wife still calls him the boy or, you know, the man-child. You know, what are we going to feed the boy?

Man-child has connotations, though. You know, I’m at the stage now where my kids are starting, see, my kids, they’re starting to give me advice. So, you know, the roles are, they’re not reversing yet, but they’re on their way.

I can’t believe they waited until their 50s to start giving their parents advice.

Well, I mean, Mom, you really shouldn’t drive there. Mom, you know, give us your itinerary. Let us know when you’re home. All this stuff. I’m like, okay. It’s just an odd time.

That’s really interesting. Well, I’m sure that our listeners will want to weigh in on this. I’m really struck by the fact that you just continue to call them your kids naturally. You know, when you’re talking to us, it just sort of slips out. And so I don’t know that you need to change it. But I also understand that you’re a little bit uncomfortable with that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Nancy will let you know what all of their listeners are. Listeners say, and maybe there’ll be something good there for you.

That sounds wonderful. I’d really like to know.

Take care of yourself and don’t drive when you shouldn’t be.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Will do. Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Nancy.

A while back, we talked about this on the show, and Penny H. in Frankfurt, Michigan, says that her parents coined the word chultz, which I assume is a combination of child and adult. And I don’t know about that penny, but there it is. It’s out there. People want it.

Schultz. Yeah. Yeah. And some people say kidult, but that just sounds so contrived.

Yeah. That’s the problem with creating the new words. They’re contrived and they’re not spread yet. So you still have to explain what you mean.

Well, let us know what you think. 877-929-9673 or send it to us an email words@waywordradio.org.