"What does it feel like to be an adult?"

My daughter (14), hit me with this question today and I wasn't sure how to answer it. I also think I threw us under the bus, unintentionally. My bad.

We were hanging out in my truck, waiting for my wife and youngest daughter to use the restroom inside before errands. My teenager and I were scrolling on our phones and I laughed at a Reddit post and went to show her but both internally and vocally went, "nope." She of course heard me and responded with, "what?" I said, "can't... Forgot for a second that you're my daughter." To which she replied, "OMG!! I do that too!! I sometimes forget that you're my dad and not like a cool adult!! How do you do that?" I asked do what and she said, "how do you be a cool parent?"

Her older brother (20) had asked the same question before around the same age, so I had the answer. It wasn't something I tried doing. My parents sucked as a kid but they still inadvertently taight me lessons, good or bad. I told her the same thing I told her brother. "My parenting is taking the things I hated from my parents and doing the opposite and doing the things they did correctly and incorporating those into our lives as well. In short, I'm trying to be the parent I wanted mine to be." Between us though, I feel my secret weapon for them, is for them to feel seen and heard. I treat them as young adults with a voice and opinions. Something my parents NEVER did for me.

She said, "hmmm... Yes yes... So what's it feel like to be an adult then? Like an actual adult and not a young adult?" To which I had no answer for. I'm turning 41 tomorrow and I just feel blah about it, it affected my answer. I'm pretty sure where I succeeded in the first response, I fumbled the second one. I said, "I dunno... I don't feel like an adult. I just feel like... ME. There's days where I feel like I'm old and there's days where I wanna laugh at fart jokes. I don't know how to answer that cuz I don't really FEEL like an adult. It's all new to me, I'm just kinda pretending I know what I'm doing with what information I have and making the best guess I can on the correct course of action."

She seemed kinda surprised and called me out. "Wait... So you don't know what you're doing and you're just kinda guessing what you SHOULD be doing? That's not what adults do." I laughed and said, "I hate to break it to you kid... But I feel like that's how most of us are getting by." She didn't seem to accept it, so I used another horrible example. I said, "look at your brother, what was his nickname?" She said Practice Kid (I jokingly call them Practice, middle and little, also monkeys cuz ALL of them are freaking climbers) and I said right, do you know why? She said no but always wondered why. I said it was because I've no idea how to parent kids, so him and I were trailblazers together. I told him often I was going to mess up cuz I was just figuring things out as we went. The shock of her finding out I meant it literally made her laugh hysterically.

Once she stopped laughing, she said, "wait... So you're literally just the saying 'fake it til you make it?'" I said sometimes but not all the time. So she wanted to know if there were others out there like me cuz she thinks I'm just messing with her. I mean... I could be wrong but I'm sure probably telling her the truth about us "adults" was probably a good thing. Maybe...? Subvert the expectations early on I suppose. I can't help but wonder if this was a parenting blunder or a win.