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Boy-problems are as universal as boys--Boys too often regarded as necessary evils--Necessity for training--How to study the boy--Tendencies in present-day education of children--Character- culture should come first--The home is the place and the parent the agency--Boys more difficult to train than girls--The boy's viewpoint--Parental indifference to boy-training--Each boy is an individual problem.

Causes of waywardness--Wrong training and bad environment-- Parental ignorance concerning boy-training--An instance-- Heredity--Accountability of the parent--Spending money--Laxity of discipline--Average parent not fully equipped for his job.

Table of psychic characteristics at several ages--Infancy and imagination--Early boyhood and individualism--Early adolescence and hero-worship--Later adolescence and thoughtful mental attitude--Age when puberty occurs--Period of motor activity.

Adolescence the period of storm and stress--Change from childhood to manhood--Puberty--Physical indicia--Mental indicia--Psychic disturbances--Truancy and wanderlust--Lack of continuity of purpose and action--Proximity to the savage state--Humor--Sex-consciousness and its manifestations--Love affairs--Plasticity of mind--Will-power appears--Age of discretion--Cycles of susceptibility to religious influences-- Age of experimentation--Hero-worship and its manifestations-- Object of hero-worship--Gratitude lacking--Reflective period-- Introspection--Sense of perspective is distorted--Visionary ambitions--Dislike of older boy for younger--Will-power, mental and moral stature attained.

Difference of viewpoint at differing psychic ages--Youth and age contrasted--The boy's desire for physical expression-- Inability for sustained mental or physical effort--Adult must put himself in boy's place to understand him--The natural adult leader of boys--Boy lives in the present--Parent must do child's thinking for him--Injustice to boy from failure to consider his standards.

Effect of nicotine on human organism--A physician's opinion-- Tobacco and the adult--Age when boys acquire the habit--Effects of tobacco on adolescents--Opinion of Dr. Seaver based on physical measurements of smokers and non-smokers--Cigarette most pernicious form of tobacco--Influences which actuate boys to acquire the habit--Poisons in the cigarette--Acrolein and carbonic oxide--Moral effects--Juvenile criminals are generally cigarette fiends--Methods used to dissuade boys from beginning-- Suggestion of a remedy for those who have contracted the habit.

Potent influence of books on the boy--Next to environment and companions--Two-fold value of literature--Desire of boy for something to read--He reads for entertainment; studies because compelled to--Reading must be suited to mental and psychological requirements--Fairy tales--Adventure tales--Informative books-- Dime novel and nickel library--Their effect on morals and literary taste--The bad book in the outward dress of good fiction--The psychological requirement for thrilling adventure tales--Comic Sunday supplements--Ideal companions for boys found in best books--Doses of literature as remedies for diseases of character--Stories of animal life--The juvenile magazine--A list of books useful for outlining a course of juvenile reading.

Importance of accurate sex knowledge--Misinformation acquired at a very early age--Necessity for scientific instruction--Former antipathy to discussion--Parent is natural teacher of sex-- Neglect of parental duty--Necessity for other agencies of instruction--Grammar schools, high schools, colleges, etc.-- Danger of premature sex excitation--Individuals who are best adapted to teach--Teacher, physician, biologist, special lecturer--Opinions for and against the school as agency for sex-instruction.

Periods in child's life when instruction should be given-- Instruction should be suited to his psychological requirements-- Mother should begin instruction--Method known as the biological approach--Nature and amount of instruction necessary--Father should assume instruction at puberty--Necessary admonitions-- Influence of theatrical productions with a sex-appeal--Musical comedies, burlesque and vaudeville shows--Sex-hygiene societies--A list of pamphlets published--A list of books recommended.

An instrumentality for reclaiming the wayward boy--The state formerly regarded delinquent boy as a criminal--New attitude toward dependent and delinquent children--Their mental and moral concepts not matured--Infractions of law are manifestations of moral disease which it is the state's business to cure--Child under sixteen cannot be a criminal-- Delinquent child is a ward of the state--The Juvenile Court-- Methods of dealing with boys--The probation officer--Laws for control of delinquent parents.

Every boy has inalienable right to be well trained--Basis of boy-training is parent-training--Insight, tact and patience necessary--Boy's need of father's companionship--Certain physical abnormalities affect intellect and character--Effects of heredity contrasted with environment--All boys possess a common nature--Summary of rules bearing on boy-training.

YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING

YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING

THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM

He who helps a child helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any other stage of their human life can possibly give again.

--BISHOP PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Boy-problems, like boys, are always with us. Wherever there is a boy there are problems to be solved. The perfect boy may live somewhere--but not in my immediate neighborhood. Even though he possesses many of the attributes of perfection, he will be found wanting in industry, or thrift, or orderliness, or courtesy, or studiousness. He may even show such traits as disobedience, untruthfulness, selfishness, truancy, thievery, or immorality. The complete boy does not just grow--he is builded and the parent is both architect and builder.

All parents at some time, and some parents at all times, regard boys as necessary evils, to be endured with varying degrees of patience. We formerly believed that boys should be seldom seen and less frequently heard. The young barbarian was and is now tolerated for the time being because of our hope that he will outgrow his rowdyism. We are disposed to let nature take its course with the juvenile savage instead of bothering our heads with the effort to understand him or to solve his problems. But to train the boy intelligently we must first train ourselves so that we can understand him and guide him through the various stages of his development.

Intelligent training is the birthright of every child. If he has not received it, he has been cheated. The training of the child up to perfect maturity is the highest duty as well as the most difficult task which devolves upon parents. The performance of this duty is, fortunately, lightened by the pleasure of association with the joyousness of childhood, but the real reward of the parent for years of patient, watchful, intelligent supervision is not only the consciousness of duty well done but the profound joy experienced in aiding the unfoldment of an immortal soul.

The study of childhood possesses a fascination for the student commensurate with its importance to humanity. It is both easier and pleasanter to study the child in the concrete than children in the abstract. But it is obvious that no comprehensive conclusions on the subject of child-training can be deduced from the study of a single child. The varying manifestations of different natures and temperaments require wide observation, covering many subjects, before correct conclusions as to cause and effect can be drawn or a systematic philosophy can be evolved. We must study the concrete boy in large numbers to be able to formulate abstract principles of boy-training. "The proper study of mankind is man," may be paraphrased into "the proper study of boykind is boy." Today we know the boy better than ever before. He has been studied, watched, weighed, analyzed, synthesized, tested, classified and labeled in all his varied aspects. We have transformed our personal knowledge of him into scientific knowledge; and various manifestations of his activities which were formerly called "pure cussedness" are now recognized as ebullitions of superabundant vitality which have been denied a natural outlet and therefore find expression in prohibited forms.

The present-day tendency in the education of American children is to emphasize the importance of knowledge, health, and character in the order in which they are here set down. To confine the term "education" solely or chiefly to the acquisition of knowledge is to limit its meaning to its usual synonym of instruction or teaching. In its truer and broader sense it implies the discipline and development of the moral, physical, and spiritual faculties, as well as the purely intellectual faculty, for it is only through such comprehensive development that ideal maturity can be approached. Sheer intellectual power, resulting from the systematic acquisition of knowledge and training of the mind, produces a one-sided individual who lacks the restraints and guidance imposed by moral and ethical concepts. He is like an ocean liner of tremendous speed and power but without chart, compass, or rudder. It is obvious that the intellectually brilliant crook, devoting his mental gifts to the accomplishment of his criminal purposes, is a less worthy and less useful citizen than the laborer of high character but limited knowledge.

The entire trend of our present system of education is to overemphasize the importance of the acquisition of knowledge and to underemphasize the necessity for the building of character. And this is the chief fault with our otherwise excellent public-school system of education, which, circumscribed by public prejudices grounded in widely differing religious beliefs, steers clear of comprehensive moral training because of its intimate coherence with religious and spiritual training. The meager moral training which the public school affords is merely incidental to its primary function of imparting knowledge. This deficiency must be supplied primarily by the home, and secondarily by the Sunday school and the church in laying the foundations of character strong and deep before the child reaches the school age and by continuing the work on the moral and spiritual super-structure until maturity beholds the building completed on all sides. When we come to realize that the true function of education is first of all to build strong character, second to develop a virile physique, and last of all to impart knowledge and discipline the mental faculties, we then will have evolved an educational system which will be effective in accomplishing its real purpose--the evolution of the child into the symmetrically equipped adult. This is the eternal boy-problem.

The home is the place and the parent is the agency for character-culture. Every father of boys ought to be a boy-expert. And he can be, by devoting to this most important of all subjects a tithe of the study which he devotes to his business or to his profession. Many parents rely entirely upon instinct or natural inclinations--which are influenced largely by mental and temperamental conditions--as their guide in boy-training. An inactive liver too frequently determines our attitude toward our offspring. Is it fair to the son that the parent blindly and blunderingly pursues his natural inclinations in training his son, instead of availing himself of the results of the research and the thought which have already been given to this subject?

More boys go wrong than girls, of which fact the records of juvenile courts, reformatories, and houses of detention bear ample evidence; and they are more difficult to train, develop, and discipline than girls. This is due to the differences in their psychological processes. Girlhood finds ample opportunity for its development in the seclusion of the home. The future function of the woman child is to be the home-maker and the bearer of children, and her training for this divine responsibility can be accomplished best amid the refining influences and protecting care which the home affords. The future of the man child is to be the breadwinner of the family and the burden-bearer of civilization. The training necessary to produce such diverse results must be as different as the respective life-works of man and woman. Boyhood requires, among other things, adventure, rough sports and out-of-door activities for its development. Boys are less obedient, less tractable, and less amenable to discipline than girls, therefore their training is correspondingly difficult and involved. We should not expect to understand the heart and soul of the boy more easily than his anatomy and physiology.

The boy sees things from a point of view different from that of the adult, based on psychological differences. The mature individual cannot obtain the boy's viewpoint unless he is able to put himself in his place. To do this he must know the child's changing mental processes and the evolution of his moral perceptions which are manifested in the four periods of his development, in each of which he exhibits a personality as far apart as those of four individuals of widely differing natures. The boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age is four different personalities, and he requires four different methods of treatment. These psychological prescriptions are as dissimilar as the medical prescriptions for boils, measles, influenza, and typhoid. The methods and plans suited for one period are unsuited for another. The realization of this basic truth is the first step toward the solution of your boy's problems.

No parent who stops with provision for the physical and intellectual demands of his child has done his full duty. It may appear trite to say that he should go further and train the character and the soul; but failure in this essential is a standing indictment against many Christian homes today. Parental indifference to and ignorance of boy-psychology are the causes which have produced untold thousands of delinquent or semi-delinquent boys. Your boy may, and thousands of boys do, weather the storm of adolescence, guided only by the blundering but loving heart which has neither accurate knowledge nor understanding of his nature; but such results are fortuitous rather than certain.

More parents have mastered the rules of bridge than have mastered the principles of child-culture. The training of the boy, despite its tremendous personal significance to him and to our homes, is less frequently and less seriously discussed than politics, the weather, or the latest style of dress. Too many boys are reared like their colored sister, Topsy, who "jest growed."

Deep down in our hearts we feel that we know much more than our neighbors about the upbringing of a son, because of our superior intuition and better judgment, even though we have never qualified for the job by study, research, or thought. Too many of us believe we are "natural-born" boy trainers. When our boy goes wrong, it is our profound conviction that it is due wholly to the influence of the bad boys with whom he associates. As a matter of fact, it is just as likely that our Johnny has corrupted his associates as that they are the cause of his moral infractions. Never, under any circumstances, do we blame ourselves either for the poor quality of his training or for permitting his evil associations. His delinquencies reflect on us and hurt our pride, but we palliate the hurt by attributing them to causes which do not involve us. We are too ready to prove an alibi when called to the court of conscience and charged with responsibility.

The average parent bitterly resents personal advice relating to the upbringing of his children, but this resentment probably has less relevancy to reading a book on boy-training because it is impersonal in its application and affords the reader the election of taking as much or as little of it to himself as his reason, judgment, vanity, or egotism may dictate.

All boys have a common nature whose development proceeds according to fixed laws; but diversities of temperament and character differentiate individuals and thus make each boy an individual problem. The solution of that problem is your job.

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

The wayward boy is often the son of a wayward parent.

Waywardness results not so much from the effects of heredity as from lack of training. Wrong training, lack of training, and bad environment are the great, compelling influences toward delinquency, which overshadow all other causes of juvenile waywardness; and for such causes parents are directly and primarily responsible.

This is a severe indictment of parents, but not more severe than the consequences of their neglect of duty warrant. Many parents act on the presumption that their obligation is fulfilled by supplying the child with food, clothing, shelter, and school, forgetting the equally important duty of developing his moral and spiritual nature. Such conditions are usually the result of indifference, a sin of omission, and only rarely do they result from bad precept and example.

The first step, then, in the training of the boy is the training of the parent. And what applies to the father usually applies, with less force, to the mother.

When we reclaim wayward parents, we shall reclaim wayward boys. The first step toward reclamation is the awakening of their sense of responsibility--the driving home of the consciousness of stewardship. "Am I my brother's keeper?" has still stronger application to the father and the mother of a son. Yours is the responsibility for the child's presence in the world; yours is the responsibility for supplying the conventional comforts on which physical life depends; but still more emphatically yours is the responsibility of furnishing the guiding hand which will pilot the frail bark of youth through the storm and stress of adolescence. During infancy he is anchored in the harbor of home, surrounded by love and physical comfort; during early boyhood his bark is drifting on the current toward the sea; while the dawn of adolescence plunges him into an unknown and uncharted ocean, without rudder or compass by which to avoid the sunken reefs of danger and the rocks which wreck the development of character. The morally obligatory duty of child-culture must be encouraged, revived, trained, and put into operation.

This boy's problem was a serious one, but not hopeless by any means. The delinquent parent was responsible for the delinquency of his son. Engrossed in the cares of manifold business interests, he "had no time" for the training of his boy. He failed to realize that making a son is more important than making money. If he had given his business no more thought and judgment than he gave his son, he would be a financial bankrupt. As it is, the son probably will be a character bankrupt. At the present time his moral liabilities exceed his assets--a poor beginning for the business of building a human life. His affairs should be in the hands of a receiver--a boy-expert who will rehabilitate the boy--or, better still, who will arouse the parent to recognize his duty and do it. The intelligent parent is the natural and best teacher of his own child.

Up-to-date horticulturists and agriculturists avail themselves of the sum total of scientific knowledge concerning their respective professions. Unscientific, misdirected, and indifferent methods produce failure; inferior fruits and grains of limited yield do not pay. The importance of many things is measured by a financial standard. When reduced to a monetary basis, production is of sufficient importance to call forth the best research, skill, and thought of the individual. Child-culture is more important than horticulture, even though its benefits cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The Department of Agriculture spends millions of dollars every year, largely in the perfection of cattle and hogs. The improvement of the breed of hogs is not more important than the improvement of the breed of boys. Personally, I prefer the boy to the hog. He is just as great a necessity in the human economy and, besides, he is much more companionable. The best crop we raise is children. Why not improve their breed? The vanity of the parent may answer that they already are splendidly endowed by heredity with all the virtues of mind, morals, and body possessed by their progenitors. But heredity is no such miracle worker. If heredity has equipped the child with a perfect physical machine it still remains necessary to teach him not only how to run it, but how to keep it in good condition. The perfect body will not, unaided, stay perfect, nor will it develop the strong mind and character. All of these--and more--are required to make the perfect man.

"Better boys" should be our slogan. The accountability of the parent for his sacred trust cannot be evaded. It is the one great, upstanding, overshadowing duty concurrent with parenthood. The failure to appreciate its importance is due to many causes. Among them may be mentioned the complexity of our present-day civilization with its incessant demands upon the time and strength of parents. In some instances the stress and struggle incident to earning a living leave little time for the development of the child. This is especially true in those homes where squalid poverty abides. The husband, exhausted by the grinding toil which he has exchanged for a scant wage, returns home at night and finds a wife worn in mind and body by her task of maintaining a home on less than is requisite for livable conditions. Neither is fit to perform the larger duties of parenthood. Add to this, sickness, accident, unemployment, intemperance, and child labor, and the cup is full. The toll of toil is wretched childhood. The children are neglected in everything except a bare physical existence. The son of such a home naturally takes to the street where he pursues his play, unguided and untaught. The result is a street gamin with all his inherent potentialities for good submerged beneath the delinquency and vice which are bred in the street. A continuous procession of such children passes through our juvenile courts every day. Such pitiable cases--and they are many--are partly grounded in the maladjustment of economic conditions. The remedy lies in a change of environment in which society as a whole must take part; in vocational training; a more equitable adjustment of wage to labor; workmen's compensation laws; health and accident insurance; inculcation of ideas of temperance; training along moral, domestic, sanitary, and hygienic lines; and general education, including a knowledge of child-training.

Conditions are different, however, in the better homes of our citizens. There the debasing consequences of sordid poverty are absent. But still the two homes are, in many instances, identical in their lack of moral training, although the causes are different. In the one home, knowledge and capacity are wanting. In the other, knowledge and capacity are present but neglected. It is these latter cases of parental neglect of duty which warrant the appellation, "wayward parent." It sometimes requires the alarm clock of filial delinquency to awaken the parent from his somnolence of indifference. The damage has then been done. They hasten to lock the stable after the horse is stolen, instead of taking precautionary measures at the needful time. "The difficult cases to deal with," remarks Judge Julius N. Mayer of the Court of Special Sessions of New York City, "are the cases of children whose parents are industrious and reputable, but who seem to have no conception at all of their duties toward their children. They fail to make a study of the child. They fail to understand him. Frequently the father, who could well afford to give his child recreation, or a little spending money, will hold his son by so tight a rein that the child is bound to break away. It may seem a little thing, but I firmly believe that many a child would be saved from his initial wrong step if the parent would make him a small allowance. In the cases where such a course is pursued the child usually becomes a sort of a little business man, husbanding his resources and willing to spend no more than his allowance; but where the child has nothing it is not strange that he should fall into temptation." The state of Colorado, in an important addition to the juvenile law, recognizes the existence of the wayward parent by declaring that all parents, guardians, and other persons, who in any manner cause or contribute to the delinquency of any child, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver has this excoriation for such parents: "Careless and incompetent parents are by no means confined to the poor. In fact, in my experience, the most blameworthy of such parents are among the so-called business men and prominent citizens. They seem to think their duty is ended when they have debauched the boy with luxury and the free use of money. They permit him to fill his life with a round of pleasure, and let him satiate his appetite without knowing what he is doing or whither he is drifting. They are too busy to become his chum or companion, and so he soon develops a secret and private life, which is often filled with corruption, and because of his standing or influence and money he may be kept out of the courts or the jails, but nevertheless is eventually added to society as a more dangerous citizen than many men who have been subjected to both. A financially well-to-do father once said to me that he was too busy to look after his boys, to be companionable, or take an interest in them. We have no more dangerous citizens than such men. In the end, I believe such a man would profit more by less business and better boys."

Parental laxness in the enforcement of discipline may be due to indifference, obtuseness, or a false sense of affection which rebels at stern correctional measures. Whatever may be the motive of the parent, the effect on the child is the same. Obedience is largely a matter of habit which becomes fixed, as do other habits, by continued repetition. Dr. William Byron Forbush stated the thought in this language: "In the American home, especially where there is not sore poverty, the cause of delinquency in children is, without question, the flabbiness and slovenliness of parents in training their children to obedience and to orderly habits."

Too often the training of the boy is shunted back and forth from father to mother like a shuttlecock which is finally knocked out of bounds. The father more frequently than the mother succeeds in evading the obligation and thereafter he rarely attempts to interfere unless we consider an occasional walloping of his son in anger the accomplishment of his duty.

The average parent is not fully equipped for his job. He is either unskilled or underskilled in boy-training. He needs education, insight, and understanding to cope with the problems of his son. If the parents default in the training of the boy--even through ignorance--need we wonder that the boy defaults in the making of the man?

Numerous boys attain the average perfection of manhood in spite of poor training--but none of them because of it. Many a father, because his son has turned out well, is wearing a self-imposed halo--when he is only lucky.

CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

A systematic knowledge of the powers and limitations of the human mind and soul before maturity and the characteristic changes which they undergo at puberty will throw a flood of light on the boy-problem. Juvenile psychology may be divided into child psychology, covering the period from birth to puberty, and adolescent psychology, covering the period from puberty to maturity. Boyhood is the interval between birth and physical maturity, the latter being reached at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, when the bones, muscles, and organs of the body have attained their complete development. Legal maturity, or majority, comes at the end of the twenty-first year, when the disabilities of infancy are removed and the boy is presumed by law to have acquired sufficient intelligence, judgment, and moral discernment to take his place in the community as a citizen, and is then vested with all the rights, duties, and obligations of an adult, even though mental maturity is deferred until he is approximately fifty years of age. We may roughly divide the boy's life into four periods of psychic unfolding in accordance with the table on page 32.

During the imaginative period covering infancy, from birth to eight years, the child lives in a land of air castles, daydreams and mental inventions, interspersed with periodic pangs of hunger which assail him at intervals of great frequency. His world is peopled with fairies, gnomes, nymphs, dryads, goblins, and hobgoblins. Elfin images are his daily playmates. Imagination runs riot and dominates his viewpoint. It is the period in which make-believe is as real as reality, and this furnishes the explanation of many of the so-called falsehoods of this age. But the development of the imagination should be guarded, not suppressed. Through imagination we visualize the future and effect world progress. All the great inventions which have advanced civilization, the political reforms which have contributed to our liberties and happiness, and the monumental works of literature, music, art, and science, would have been impossible without the exercise of the imaginative faculty.

Imagination is not only of great value in educating the intellect and morals, but it is a desirable mental attribute which promotes sympathy, discloses latent possibilities of things and situations, and broadens one's appreciation of life. It is needed by the laborer, ditch-digger and sewer-cleaner as well as by the musician, artist, and author.

In this period the child learns more than in all his subsequent life. He learns to talk, to walk, to feed himself and to play; he learns the rudiments of written and printed language, and the names and uses of the various objects he sees about him; he comprehends form, color, perspective, and harmony; his imagination, so useful in later life, blossoms forth; his moral sense buds and the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong unfolds; the intense desire to learn and to know is born--evidenced by his rapid-fire and continuous questions; he is possessed by a voracious appetite for knowledge which must be fed by a harvest of information; and the habit of obedience and the recognition of parental authority become fixed. His horizon is bounded by physical growth and the acquisition of knowledge. All subsequent knowledge is either a variant of or a supplement to the basic knowledge acquired during infancy.

The ascendant trait of the imaginative period is the faculty of make-believe. It is the ability of the mind to create mental images of objects previously perceived by the senses. It involves the power to reconstruct and recombine materials, already known, into others of like symbolic purport. It is exhibited when Johnny mounts a broomstick, shouting, "Get up, horsie!" and "Whoa!" The imagination builds up a mental image of a real horse, which he has seen, out of the stick-and-string substitute. Through fancy, he endows the counterfeit with all the attributes of the original and for the time being the broomstick is a real, living, bucking horse. Such make-believe is an important factor in the development and co?rdination of ideas and the acquisition of knowledge. And so in the innumerable instances of make-believe plays, whether he pretends in fancy to be papa, a ravenous bear, a soldier, a policeman, or what not, he temporarily lives the part he is playing and merges his personality into the assumed character with an abandon which should excite the envy of an actor.

Witness also the imagination displayed by Mary when she builds a house with a line of chairs, and peoples it with imaginary friends with whom she carries on extended conversations, and takes the several parts in the dialogue when the absence of playmates renders such expedient necessary. Impersonation is grounded in imagination. Every little girl impersonates her mother, with a doll as her make-believe self, and spends many hours in pretending to care for its physical needs, teaching it mentally, and even correcting its morals with some form of punishment with which she herself is acquainted, whether corporal or otherwise.

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