People reveal the moments in life when they stopped feeling young

'My son who is 26 asked me what it felt like to be 'my' age. I said. 'I don't know…I'm still playing video games,' one person commented.

Somewhere in between paying your first rent bill and the time where you start complaining about lower back pain lies the point at which we actually transition from child to adult.

From the disappointing realisation that you can’t recover so quickly from a hangover to the awareness that most celebrities are younger than you, the inevitability of becoming an adult can seem sudden.

But in a recent Reddit thread, one person tried to pin-point the salient markers, asking: What was the first moment you thought “I’m actually not young anymore?”

Answers varied from despondently plucking the first grey hair to hiring employees younger than their children, but many described the definite rapidity of the realisation.

One person named their changing attitude to night-life as the key indicator, complaining about one night out where the noise and smokiness made them want to leave immediately.

Another said that certain ages make you feel as though time goes more quickly writing: “Seriously I feel like 23-29 passed by faster than 20-23.”

A change in reaction to annual recurrences was also suggested as a key point. “It took YEARS to get from Dec 1 to Dec 24. LITERAL YEARS. It was FOREVER,” they wrote.

However, describing last year they said: “One morning I got up and it was the first, and then I came home and it was the 22^nd and I was flying home for Christmas.”

Another added simply that it when their friends started having kids “on purpose.”

Biological signs such as the growing familiarity of aches and the first wrinkles were cited along with the envy of many younger people becoming Olympians or getting their doctorates were also recounted.

But one man in his 50s said his habits and behaviours still defy the notions of sensibility inherent in what it means to be an adult, “my son who is 26 asked me what it felt like to be 'my' age. I said. 'I don't know…I'm still playing video games and reading comic books.”

A solution for feeling younger could lie in keeping things fresh with one person commenting that you remember more if you try new things. “I’m 39 and the only periods of my life that I felt flew by were ones where I was basically in a rut.”

It seems that the embers of youth can still glow while we embrace the perhaps more leisurely perks of what it can mean to grow older.