Growing Up — Tag Meaning
Covers the long arc of maturation — fics that follow characters across years, watching them accumulate scars, skills, and selves. It suits childhood-to-adulthood retrospectives and stories about the quieter growing up that happens in adulthood when life demands it.
What to Expect From "Growing Up" Fics
Time as a structural element: stages of life traversed on-page, with change itself as the story.
How to find Growing Up fics on AO3
On AO3, click any tag to see every work that uses it, then refine with the "Filters" sidebar — combine it with your fandom or ship, set a rating, or exclude tags you don't want. See our AO3 filtering guide for the full walkthrough.
Browse "Growing Up" works on AO3Popular Fics Tagged "Growing Up"
Real examples from AO3's most-kudosed works:
How (thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (accidentally) raised each other (and Sam).
by Vee (Vera_DragonMuse)
how to talk to other humans (and other valuable life skills)
by drawingspaces
A Story for Every Corner
by thepinupchemist
Unidentical Twins
by Yevynaea
Her Life and Her Death
by magicmoon111
Shining Light
by TwilightMaster15
Related Tags
Coming of Age
The threshold-crossing genre: a young character's passage into a new understanding of themselves and the world — first love, first loss, first real choice with weight. Fanfic applies it to canon teens and to younger versions of adult characters, filling in the formative years.
Tag guide →
Childhood Memories
Tags fic anchored in remembered childhood — flashback structures, nostalgia triggered by objects and places, or adults excavating who they were before everything happened. Authors use it to build backstory canon never supplied, with memory as the connective tissue between then and now.
Tag guide →
Character Study
A fic whose project is understanding one character deeply — their psychology, history, contradictions — rather than telling an eventful story. Often written about complex or underexplored characters, these pieces function as essays in narrative form and are prized in fandoms with rich casts.
Tag guide →
First Love
Tags the inaugural experience of being in love — overwhelming, unfiltered, and without precedent to steady it. Authors use it for young characters discovering the feeling and for retrospective fics where a first love is remembered, mourned, or unexpectedly re-encountered years on.
Tag guide →
More Family & Friendship Tags
Read Growing Up fanfiction on the go
Fanfict Reader is the best way to browse, search, and read AO3 fanfiction on your iPhone. Download for free and start reading your favorite stories today.