Your boy and his training

by Edwin Seward Puller

His proximity to the savage state is shown in his appreciation of primitive humor. The unexpected which causes discomfiture or pain is excruciatingly ludicrous. It is the crude, slap-stick comedy which excites his disposition to risibility. The knockabout comedian who falls down stairs or beats his partner over the head with an inflated bladder produces the same degree of laughter in a boy as the felling of one savage by another with a war club produces in the onlooking members of their tribe. The rapier wit of keen intellectuality and the subtle humor of fine distinctions observed in a play on words all pass over his unscathed head.

He is a living paradox who displays at times the gallantry, courtesy and chivalry of the knight-errant with the thoughtlessness, rudeness, and boisterousness of the harum-scarum rowdy.

Sex-consciousness now asserts itself in an increased but diffident interest in the opposite sex, accompanied by blushes, embarrassment, and self-consciousness when in their presence. The desire to appear attractive in the eyes of his girl friends prompts minute and painstaking attention to dress, and the brilliant plumage of the male bird is reflected in the bright colors of his attire. Formerly he regarded girl playmates from the same viewpoint from which he regarded boys and they were placed on the same plane and received the same consideration as that accorded to those of his own sex, except where the teaching of the sex-conscious parent required him to display a gentleness toward them which his own lack of sex-consciousness failed to prompt. Now, gentleness, courtesy, and gallantry are inspired by adolescence from within. The companionship of the adolescent with pure, high-minded girls of his own age is beneficial to both in the greatest degree. Such associations are of educational value in that they project high ideals of the feminine traits of gentleness, sweetness, and purity whose influence is reflected in his improved manners, dress, and conduct. It fosters the idealistic and spiritual phase of love and removes it from the coarseness and baseness engendered by the purely sexual appeal. These love affairs are numerous but transitory—their duration being dependent upon the time required to satisfy his idealism; and at the first suggestion that his idol has feet of clay his affection is transferred to another pretty face and sweet nature. Not infrequently he bestows his affection upon a girl several years older than himself, to which he is actuated by two impulses—the half-formed sex-impulse of the man to seek a mate, and his adolescent need of “mothering,” both of which are measurably gratified by the reciprocal love of an older girl.

He begins his love-making slyly and shamefacedly. George waits after school, occupied with an ostensible engagement which will consume the time until Mary shall appear. His meeting with her, after all these elaborate plans, appears to be quite unexpected. A diffident greeting is followed by an inquiry as to whether she is going home. Her affirmative answer is seized upon as his excuse for walking in her direction. Then follows his request to be permitted to carry her books. They discuss matters of mutual interest in school or social life, while he, with furtive glances, notes the beauty of her face, the wealth of her hair, and the velvet of her cheek. Sunlight is playing hide-and-seek in her eyes, while the roses in her cheeks blush a deeper red, matching the ribbon which adorns her pigtails as she feels the flood of his unexpressed admiration surging over her. Never was there such a wondrous being in all the world! He idealizes her every attribute until she surmounts a pedestal far removed from things earthy. A smile of approval from this young goddess is treasured in his heart of hearts, sacred from the misunderstandings of a profane world. He is assailed by daydreams of knight-errantry in which he is performing some chivalrous act of heroism to which the maiden shall be a witness. Or better still, he imagines himself playing the part of a cavalier rescuing her own sweet self from distress or danger and then receiving as his reward her avowal of affection, while he protests that his heroism is nothing and that he would do a thousand times more for her.

Evidences of his tender regard for the girl of his choice are given in secret, as too holy for an unappreciative world to comprehend, and the twittings of his elders on the subject of puppy love (cruel in their unsound psychology) are met with prompt and positive denials. Such manifestations of incipient affection should be recognized as the intermediary elaboration of a high and spiritual love whose ultimate fruition will be matrimony. All the world loves a lover—provided he is not a boy. The adult who cannot see the psychology in such incidents must be blind indeed.

The exceptional plasticity of mind characteristic of this age renders him highly susceptible to influences for good or evil. It is the great character-building period of his life in which are crystallized his moral and ethical concepts which attain their latter perfection in the succeeding period. Your boy is putty in your hands. He is a superlative impressionist. His impressionistic mind is molded as deeply by evil as by good. For this reason, it is necessary that his environment—which is the cumulative influence of the precept, example, and conditions which surround him—should be good and wholesome. As the drip-drip-drip of water wears away the stone, so the constant drip of environing influences wears its way into character.

The foundations of will-power are now laid in his efforts to propel himself into a choice between the good and the bad, between right and wrong. Judgment and discretion appear in embryonic form and slowly and laboriously develop into cautious discernment and the faculty of deciding justly and wisely, which reach their approximate maturity late in the reflective period.

It may be interesting to note that the law presumes that every person at the age of fourteen has common discretion and understanding, until the contrary is made out; but under that age there is no such presumption. It therefore follows that when a child under fourteen years of age is offered as a witness in a court of law, a preliminary examination conducted by the judge must be made to ascertain whether he has sufficient intelligence to relate the facts as they occurred and sufficient moral sense to comprehend the nature and obligation of an oath. But the law is conservative in its presumption, as such intelligence and moral comprehension are, in most instances, developed in the child at a much earlier age and numerous cases are cited in the law reports in which children as young as seven or eight have qualified, after examination, as witnesses competent to testify.

During this period occur three cycles of particular susceptibility to religious influence. The first appears about the age of twelve under the stimulus of witnessing the conversion or affiliation with the church of some adult whom he looks up to, and is chiefly due to the faculty of imitation—one of the characteristics carried over from the individualistic period; the next occurs at age of fourteen, when his emotionalism is dominant, under the excitement of a powerful emotional experience; the third cycle of religious conversion appears at sixteen when he is leaving the heroic period and entering the thoughtful or reflective stage of his adolescence and such a conversion is grounded in the thoughtful promptings of the intellect, rather than the emotions.

This is also the age of experimentation in which his longing to know the unknown leads him to make short excursions into the fields of mechanics, physics, electricity, hydraulics, magic, and others which hide their secrets from the casual observer. This trend of his activities may be directed by suggestion, supplemented with the necessary equipment, toward manual training and handicraft—ideal employments for the early adolescent.