Your boy and his training

by Edwin Seward Puller

This is the age of hero-worship and every boy in this period, without exception, has a personal hero. He may not take the world into his confidence by divulging his secret, but whether admitted or not, he possesses a hero whom he looks up to, admires, and copies. I know a thirteen-year-old lad whose hero is his eighteen-year-old cousin for whom his admiration manifests itself to the extent of trying to imitate his tone of voice, his walk, his gestures, and personal appearance, including the wearing of the same kind of ties which his cousin affects. He never ceases praising the football prowess of his relative and continually quotes him as an authority on athletics.

The boy of this age worships a physical hero. Power, strength, and authority make a powerful appeal. His hero may be the policeman on his beat who is the emblem of physical strength and vested with the authority of law to make arrests; the fireman who displays wonderful courage in the rescue of imperiled persons from burning buildings; the engineer who guides the locomotive dashing like a meteor through the blackness of night; the prize fighter who has won a championship in the squared ring; or the baseball or football athlete whose name is on every tongue. His hero must be a mighty man of action, for he worships at the shrine of athletic prowess. To test the truth of this statement, ask any boy you may meet, between the ages of twelve and sixteen, whether he would rather be the winner of the Nobel prize for scientific achievement or Ty Cobb (with a batting average of approximately .370), and the unanimous verdict will be in favor of the ballplayer. So strongly is hero-worship implanted in his nature and so completely does it dominate his viewpoint that it remains, with gradually diminishing intensity, for many years thereafter. Happy the boy whose father is his hero and happy the father who is a hero to his son!

The objective of hero-worship is always an older male—never a female. No instance of normal heroine-worship has ever been noted. The wealth of love which he may manifest toward his mother, female friend or teacher is entirely disassociated from hero-worship. It lacks the sex-element necessary to inspire emulation. He wants to be a man—not a woman. For this reason, it is desirable that he should have opportunity for association, during adolescence, with men of strong character and personality. The differences between the psychologic processes of the male and the female adult are too well known to require discussion here. Widows who keenly appreciate the absence of the father’s guiding hand frequently attempt to be both father and mother to their sons, and in so doing the apron strings are knotted doubly hard and fast. Then ensues a conflict between the feminine and maternal policy and the adolescent longing and reaching out for ultimate masculinity. The mother is the last person to recognize adolescence in her son; she wants him to remain the infant she has always regarded him. His beginnings to emulate masculinity clash with her desire to keep him a child. I have in mind a mother who is rearing the most lady-like boy in my acquaintance. Her inherent delicacy and refinement of nature prompt her to develop these same qualities in her son as the ultimate end to be attained. With no qualifications for boy-training except mother-love, feminine ideals, and an ambition to rear her son to beautiful manhood, she refuses him participation in rough and tumble sports and games because they are “rude and ungentlemanly” and besides, they would soil his clothes. Many mothers of the neighborhood hold him up to their own unregenerate offspring as a model of neatness and a paragon of propriety, but the boys call him “Sissy.” The author has witnessed many examples of apron-string policy whose unpsychological and repressive tendencies cannot fail to be detrimental to the ideal development of adolescence.

Gratitude is a virtue displayed by few boys prior to the reflective period, because they fail to appreciate the motives which inspire the act which should call forth expressions of gratitude, especially if the act or service is of an altruistic nature. Of course, he will thank you for a gift of candy or a toy; but never for the time and thought expended in giving him instruction or moral training, or taking him in the woods for a day, or pointing out to him the constellations at night. He is not ungrateful. He merely accepts these things as a matter of course until he reaches the age which recognizes and appreciates the sacrifices incurred by the giver of altruistic service.

The beginning of the reflective period witnesses the subsidence of the fierce storms of earlier adolescence and is followed by comparative physical and emotional calm, although attended by intellectual agitations of lesser import. The boy now enters an era of mental development characterized by a thoughtful, reflective attitude toward the great problems of life. A serious viewpoint is developed which changes the previous aspect of the world. He devotes much thought to his life-work; to making choice of an occupation or profession and preparing for it. His future career looms large in the foreground of his problems, and prompts a close analysis of his inclinations, aptitudes, and qualifications for special lines of work. The realization that he must soon take his place among the men who are doing the world’s work overwhelms him, at times, with the immensity of his job. Introspection, as a part of his self-analysis, becomes a habit which induces him to make continual comparisons between his own natural endowments and those of others of his own age. He seeks, with all the faculties at his command, to find that niche in the business, professional, or industrial world which he can best fill and it is at this time that he needs the vocational guidance of his father.

Early in this period a morbid self-consciousness frequently appears as the result of a too minute introspection with eyes whose views of life are not correlated. He discovers defects in his personal appearance, faults of character and deficiencies of intellect which are magnified out of their true proportions. His sense of perspective is in its formative stage and this causes many molehills to loom high as mountains. He is now his own most severe critic and imagines that his immature conclusions as to his personality are shared by all others; and many hours of humility and mental depression ensue from this condition. Egotism and an exalted appreciation of his own worth are also manifest, due to the same uncoordinated sense of values. He often exhibits alternate states of exaltation and depression produced by a trifling remark or a trivial incident which is given an importance it does not deserve. As he advances through this period, his perspective finds truer adjustment, his sense of values becomes settled, his judgment ripens and these anomalies disappear. But he may be saved many hours of soul-stress by the father who is able to diagnose his condition, or who is on sufficiently intimate terms of confidence with his son to inspire a frank avowal of his troubles. Here is the opportunity for the father to apply his common sense, ripe judgment and experience to the solution of these problems of the later adolescent.

Attention has already been called to his impressionability to religious influences during the early part of this period through an appeal based in intellectualism (as distinguished from the emotionalism of the preceding period), to which the ethical concepts now being formed are closely related.

Another distinguishing trait is the evolution of his sociological consciousness through which he recognizes himself as a unit in the social economy, with all its attendant rights and duties. He discards the selfishness and individualism of an earlier era and adopts the obligations of altruism. His desire to be of genuine service to his fellow man seeks expression first in visionary plans to reform the world, followed afterward by practical work in help for others, such as leadership in boys’ clubs, secretarial duties or teaching in Sunday schools, or similar employments of altruistic purport. Government under processes of law takes on a newer, clearer and more personal meaning. And with it comes recognition of civic responsibility.

Intellectual storms gather when vague, unassorted, inchoate, and impossible theories of social and political reform—long since tried and discarded—loom big on his horizon and are eagerly seized upon and advocated as original discoveries. His opinions are expressed with a dogmatism which characterizes the cocksureness of youth. Verbal limitations inspired by sound judgment and broad experience, as well as the cautious phraseology of scientific conservatism have no place in his vocabulary. His theories are all promulgated with an arrogant assertiveness born of the optimism of inexperience. He is now fairly bursting with self-importance. But all these manifestations are important only as indicating his desire to solve the great problems of life and are the precursors of a sounder judgment which will come with maturity of intellect and experience.

It is at or near the beginning of this period that the youth looks down on the younger boy, whom he characterizes as a “kid.” The dislike and even positive aversion of the older boy for companionship with the younger has its basis not so much in their differing physical and mental attainments as in their differing viewpoints caused by their unequal psychological development. Illustration of this may be observed in two boys, both of whom are sixteen years of age and of equal mentality and physique, one of whom has and the other has not entered the reflective period. Such boys are out of harmony with each other in every taste, desire, and predilection which is actuated by psychological impulse, and find a common ground of companionship only in athletics and classroom studies.