How old was Adam?

A friend of mine who recently became a father began musing on the origins of man. Why is it that we assume God created Adam as a full-grown man? There is little in the Biblical text that would answer the question of Adam's age definitively. From a Creationist standpoint, it is easier to defend the apparent discrepancy between scientific analysis of the earth's age and the Biblical narrative if we can say God created Adam as a full grown man, so he could have also created the earth itself with age. But Jerad's question remains an interesting one.

Both as a parent and a children's minister, I am constantly amazed by the developmental stages of children, and in awe of their sheer capacity to learn. When creating life, would God have wanted to skip those incredible years? Wouldn't God have wanted to cradle Adam, nurture him, and sustain him in the most fundamental ways that bring parents such joy? Could it be that God and Adam enjoyed the most intimate parent/child relationship EVER?

Thinking through this question, which seems to be a purely academic query, led me to analyze my philosophy of ministry to children. Is there something about God's creation of man that informs how I relate to kids, how I teach them, how I encourage them to grow in relationship with God? For years, I have used Mark 10:14 to support my view that children are important to God. While this is certainly true, and an appropriate use of the verse, do Jesus' words here do more than fill children's ministry brochures? Was He perhaps not introducing a new concept, but reaffirming what has always been true from the beginning? In shifting my understanding of who Adam was, can I perhaps see how God created children? Does this change how I, and the church as a whole, approach Christian education of children? So many people I talk with believe that kids need religious instruction so they have a good solid Christian foundation for later in life. Solid doctrine is good and valuable in its own right, but what if we started believing that kids need God, because that's why God created them! He wants to be in fellowship with them from the moment of birth, the way He originally designed it.