The struggles of being older than your peers

Stress, low self-esteem, and struggling with grades – these are some of the many things that are common to most students' academic and personal lives. These aspects of our lives are usually acceptable to talk about and considered to be important factors determining our well-being.

However, not every student's experiences are symmetric or given equal importance. One such issue is a student's age.

In our schooling system, it's quite common for children to be admitted to school two or three years later than most of their peers. In most cases, it might not be a very memorably difficult or disadvantaging circumstance for the student as they grow up. As Tanzika Tabassum, who studied at Maple Leaf International School, stated, "When I was really young, I did feel a little insecure about my age because I was scared that I might get treated differently or even bullied. But as I grew up, I actually never had any problem telling my friends my age. I wouldn't say it affected my self-esteem in any way."

For most students, having a close group of friends from childhood, especially with varying ages, ensures that they never end up feeling very different for their own age. On the other hand, students who have had to shift down a grade or have unsupportive families tend to have more mixed or negative experiences of being older than their peers.

Bushra Taeen, a private A Level candidate, has both bad and good memories of making friends from different age groups. She shared the struggles of trying to socialise in spaces where she was left out or judged. She said, "People have judged me for being older than them, saying things like 'someone your age should know better', or 'it's weird to be friends with someone older' as if I'm more of an aunt. Worst of all, it sometimes felt like they see me as a loser who must definitely have failed, and that is why I was in the same class as them."

But eventually, despite these incidents, Taeen found her fulfilment.

"Now, I actually feel a lot more comfortable with my age and myself. Changing grades helped me make many new, good, and different friends, who changed my perspective on a lot of things," she said. 

Hridoy Chishty*, a private A Level student, has felt that their age has been a source of negativity from people in their life, which made finding friends or even connecting with their family much tougher than it would be for someone who does not have to face discrimination for their age. 

"You are always reminded of the idea that you are 'falling behind' and that you are an example of exactly what parents and teachers don't want their kids to end up as – late in any aspect of life. People joking about your age, without even knowing the context of your life, is normalised and never verbalised as something wrong," said Chishty.

A fairly common practice for families is to age down their children on official certificates to be the same age as their peers. This, in Chishty's experience, has been held against them, even though the discrepancy in their actual age and the age according to their certificate was not a result of their own choice.

"Conversations in my family about this are not conversations as much as they are sudden bursts of anger, accompanied by unkind remarks meant to shame me for being older than my peers. In families where there's a general lack of communication, any kid undergoes a huge amount of shame and guilt due to the stigma of this topic."

"If you can't trust someone with your age, you definitely can't trust them with your struggles. It's hard not to feel isolated because of this anxiety at times, and it has made me hyper-independent in the last two to three years. Taking an extra year academically put a complete 180-degree turn on my social life. I no longer had the friends I grew up with and it felt like being handed bricks and cement and having to rebuild a social life. I am constantly reminded of the fact that I'm falling behind, and it is something that erodes your self-esteem down to pebbles at some point," Chishty shared, giving their conclusion on how difficult such age discrimination has been for them.

For anyone going through tough experiences because of their age, you are not alone. As each of these people has pointed out, being older than your peers is okay. After all, only you know what you have gone through. Find people you trust, and focus on yourself and your own academic progress, and it will get easier to believe that life has good things in store for you.

*Names have been changed upon request.