First of all, parents need to be reminded of the naturalness and wholesomeness of the sex instincts in adolescent boys and girls. They must be urged to provide carefully for its natural growth through the proper commingling of the sexes in a social way, and yet there must be preserved in the young lives just enough strangeness and mystery about the sex matters as to indulge the poetic and the romantic aspects of the unfolding natures. It need not, therefore, be a matter of worry and unusual concern to parents if their fifteen-year-old son and a neighbor’s thirteen-year-old daughter show pronounced tendencies to be “crazy in love” with each other. However, this situation furnishes most fitting opportunities for teaching the boy courtly manners, gallantry, consideration for women of all ages; and that through and by means of his own personal experience. In fact, this stirring period of sex-love opens up in the mind of the boy reflections that tend to run out into every possible avenue of his future life.
Likewise, the girl. That same little girl who shortly ago hated boys and declared she would never have anything to do with them is now manifesting much interest in the youth of her acquaintance. This thing cannot be laughed to scorn, or scolded away, or whipped out of the life of either boy or girl. Its roots are in the sex organs as well as in the heart. This first love period furnishes the rarest opportunities for teaching the girl proper lessons in respect to her comeliness, her purity of thought, and the sweetness of her own personal character. If during this time she be withheld entirely from wholesome association with boys and young men, there is a probability that she may become a drone or a mope, and especially that she may lose valuable training in the acquisition of those winsome ways so helpful to young women in the matter of their obtaining suitable life companions.
Perhaps less need be said in respect to giving the growing son those forms of social training which make it possible for him to win to his side an attractive helpmate. But beyond the question of a doubt there can and should be much done by way of training the daughter in this respect. In addition to her good health, her moral self-reliance, and those other desirable qualities illustrated in a preceding paragraph, the young woman who is thoroughly prepared for meeting successfully the issues of life has had careful training in all the practices that refine and beautify her character.
This duty of rural parents to the growing daughter is no less imperative than in the case of city parents. It may be considered as an excellent way of planning for the future happiness and well-being, not merely for one, but doubtless for an entire family, if the growing girl be indulged and directed reasonably in social matters during this period of greatest strength of her natural sex instinct. This thing cannot be safely put off a few years with the thought that the family will move to town and then the girl may have her proper opportunities of training. After such procrastination and neglect, it becomes too late ever to correct the many faults of omission.
10. There develops somewhat late in the lives of young men and young women what might be called the “homing” instinct, which amounts to nothing other than a deep and pronounced prompting from within to set definitely about the matter of getting into a home of one’s own and providing for and building it up. This is different from the mere sex instinct named above, although perhaps an outgrowth of it. It must be noted in passing that this homing instinct, when at its strongest, furnishes the proper occasion for instruction in respect to the home and the home-building affairs. Happy indeed is the young man or the young woman who, after a period of such instruction, may have the opportunity of settling down in a suitable dwelling place and there beginning the establishment of the ideal family life.
11. Unquestionably there dawns in the life of normal young men—and perhaps to a milder degree in respect to young women—a pronounced instinct of a business and economic sort. This inner prompting is doubtless associated with the two last named. It may be observed by any person who knows how to study the lives of children and young people that some particular youth who a few months ago was a spendthrift, indifferent of his future needs and welfare, is now heard to declare emphatically again and again that he must get into business, must save and invest his means and provide for his future needs. So, there is not a little evidence in effect that we have here another inner development of the nerve mechanism. And the time is most fit and opportune for the parents to exhaust every reasonable effort to discover what the youth is best suited for as a life practice and to guide him on toward the realization of that purpose. Much more will be said in another chapter in respect to the choice of a vocation.
REFERENCES
Rural parents who develop an intensive interest in the child-training problems will find it most profitable to read somewhat extensively in the texts that are not too direct but that give a careful treatment of the fundamental principles of child psychology. King’s and O’Shea’s books listed below are of this special character. For a fuller list, see [Chapter VI].
The Child: A Study in the Evolution of Man. A. F. Chamberlain. Chapter IV, “The Period of Childhood.” Scribner. A sound and somewhat scholarly treatment.
Boy Wanted. Nixon Waterman. Chapter I, “The Awakening”; Chapter II, “Am I a Genius?” Forbes & Co., Chicago.
Education of the Central Nervous System. Reuben P. Halleck. Chapter VII, “Special Sensory Training.” American Book Company.
The Moral Life. Arthur E. Davies. Chapter V, “Motive: The Beginnings of Morality.” Review Publishing Company, Baltimore.
Psychology. J. R. Angell. Chapter XVI, “The Important Human Instincts.” Holt.
Essentials of Psychology. W. B. Pillsbury. Chapter X, “Instinct.” Macmillan. Rural parents will find this entire text a non-technical and fundamental help.
Development and Education. M. V. O’Shea. Chapter XII, “The Critical Period.” Houghton, Mifflin Company.
Psychology of Child Development. Irving King. Chapter on “Instinct.” University of Chicago Press.
Your Boy: His Nature and Nurture. George A. Dickinson, M.D. Chapter II, “Elements of Character.” Hodder & Stoughton, New York.
An Introduction to Child Study. W. B. Drummond. Chapter XII, “The Instincts of Children” ; Chapter XIII, “Instincts and Habit.” Longmans. The book is worthy an entire reading.
A Study of Child Nature. Elizabeth Harrison. Chapter I, “The Instinct of Activity.” Chicago Kindergarten College.
Observing Childhood. A. S. Draper. Annals American Academy, March, 1909.
Are we spoiling our Boys who have the Best Chances in Life? Henry van Dyke. Scribner’s Magazine. October, 1909.
How to civilize the Young Savage. Dr. G. Stanley Hall. Mind and Body, June, 1911.