for love of overcoming obstacles of difficulty, perhaps even of conflict. This
impulse is often the secret of obstinacy.[1] And yet, "at no time in life will a
human being respond So heartily if treated by older and wiser people as if he
were an equal or even a superior. The attempt to treat a child at adolescence as
you would treat an inferior is instantly fatal to good discipline."[2] Parents still
think of their offspring as mere children, and tighten the rein when they should
loosen it. Many young people feel that they have the best of homes and yet that
they will go crazy if they must remain in them. If the training of earlier years has
been good, guidance by command may now safely give way to that by ideals,
which are sure to be heroic. The one unpardonable thing for the adolescent is
dullness, stupidity, lack of life, interest, and enthusiasm in school or teachers,
and, perhaps above all, too great stringency. Least of all, at this stage, can the
curriculum school be an ossuary. The child must now be taken into the family
councils and find the parents interested in all that interests him. Where this is not
done, we have the conditions for the interesting cases of so many youth, who
now begin to suspect that father, mother, or both, are not their true parents. Not
only is there interest in rapidly widening associations with coevals, but a new
lust to push on and up to maturity. One marked trait now is to seek friends and
companions older than themselves, or next to this, to seek those younger. This is
marked contrast with previous years, when they seek associates of their own age.
Possibly the merciless teasing instinct, which culminates at about the same time,
may have some influence, but certain it is that now interest is transpolarized up
and down the age scale. One reason is the new hunger for information, not only
concerning reproduction, but a vast variety of other matters, so that there is often
an attitude of silent begging for knowledge. In answer to Lancaster's[3]
questions on this subject, some sought older associates because they could learn
more from them, found them better or more steadfast friends, craved sympathy
and found most of it from older and perhaps married people. Some were more
interested in their parents' conversation with other adults than with themselves,
and were particularly entertained by the chance of hearing things they had no
business to. There is often a feeling that adults do not realize this new need of
friendship with them and show want of sympathy almost brutal.
Stableton,[4] who has made interesting notes on individual boys entering the
adolescent period, emphasizes the importance of sympathy, appreciation, and
respect in dealing with this age. They must now be talked to as equals, and in
this way their habits of industry and even their dangerous love affairs run be
controlled. He says, "There is no more important question before the teaching