Growing Up Too Early

My little sister's all grown up now, but she's only ten years old. She looks like a teenager. She thinks like a teenager. And you could say she acts like one because teenagers themselves are not very mature. She loves to hang around me, and she tries to persuade me to act more like a typical 18-year-old girl because she wants to be one herself. She begs me to take her shopping and let her do my hair. She wants to be just like me.

At first, I thought it was because she's the youngest in the family, and she wanted to be like her big sister. However, I realized I didn't look like the typical teen. In fact, she dresses more like a typical teenager than I do. Many of her friends are the oldest children in their families yet try to present the image of a teenager. They all seem to wish they were older. Girls these days just seem to want to, and do, grow up sooner and sooner. It seems the "teenage years" have changed, starting well before the age of thirteen.

As I have said, my sister and her friends are prime examples of this change. For instance, they have sleep-overs and stay up till dawn. Their many sleep-over activities include gossiping about boys and discussing fashions, painting nails, and experimenting with make-up. I never did such things at that age. My friends and I had to go to bed by one or two at the latest, and we played games and watched movies. My sister also thinks that she should have the same privileges that I do at age nineteen when she's only ten. She thinks she can stay up late, till ten or eleven o'clock. I was in bed by eight when I was her age. Not only does she want to stay up late, but she also thinks that she can watch any movie she wants.Its hard to pick a movie which she can watch with us.But this has given her the idea that she is mature enough to watch anything she wants. She likes the TV show Friends, but at her age she doesn't completely understand the adult content in the show, nor does she need to. However, she begs to watch it. At her age, it was unthinkable for me even to consider such demands. Yes, she is the youngest in the family, but she wants to watch these things because her friends do and then come to school and talk about them.