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.
CHAPTER II
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
THE wayward boy is often the son of a wayward parent.