That would explain why she still acts like a kid. She hasn't given herself space to grow up since she was 13.

Verity sits quietly for a few minutes, thinking, trying to figure out how to explain it. Good gods, she's going to have to resort to metaphor. "If you were trying to grow a plant, it would need sunlight and air and a certain amount of water, right? But it needs those things gradually, at intervals. If you dumped all the water over the plant at once, you'd drown it."