I know I'm coming to this discussion late and I have only read the first half of the posts, but I totally identified with this feeling when I was a kid.
I used to hate to play in the front yard when I was 6 or 7 because, if I did, the neighbors would see me and think I was a kid. Silly, I know, but I was very serious about it. Also didn't want to order Happy Meals at McDonald's even though I wanted everything in a Happy Meal. I just didn't want people to see me acting like a kid.
What I really wanted, though, was to be taken seriously. I didn't want my thoughts and ideas dismissed by adults and my much older siblings just because I was a kid. I didn't want to be told that I was wrong about things because I wasn't old enough or experienced to know better. I really wanted people to see and understand the unique ways I saw things and to take me seriously. The fact that I felt much older than I was had a lot to do with it, but also I've always just seen things from a different perspective and couldn't understand why others wouldn't take the time to listen to me just because I was a kid.
So, for me, it wasn't a freedom thing or a rule thing or a can't-wait-to-be-an-adult thing, it was just that, in my mind, I was not a little kid and I wanted to be respected and treated like the thoughtful person that I was.
