Your boy and his training

A CORRECT understanding of boy-nature is conditioned on one’s ability to obtain his point of view, which differs widely from that of the adult. It has been stated in a previous chapter that the viewpoints of a boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age differ as widely from each other as those of four adults of remotely differing natures and temperaments. We frequently make the mistake of assuming that the boy is a small edition of a man, possessing faculties, emotions, desires, and understanding the same as in the adult but developed in a lesser degree. On the contrary, his mental and psychological processes differ fundamentally from those of maturity. Boys are not little men and should not be judged by men’s standards.

The ignorant peasant who views the masterpieces of the Louvre sees them through dull, uncomprehending eyes. He sees but does not perceive, because his appreciation of artistic beauty is limited by a circumscribed capacity. Just so, the boy, circumscribed by the limitations of his mind and soul, views life and its complex manifestations with such capacities as he possesses. If your mental and psychological limits were those of a boy in the hero-worship period, your tastes, desires, judgments, opinions, and actions would conform exactly to that boy-standard. Your standards of ambition and achievement would be purely physical and therefore you would prefer the prize fighter to the scientist.

The physical and mental requirements for youth and age are as wide apart as the two poles. As reminiscence characterizes old age, so enjoyment of the present typifies young age. The Bard of Avon has thus compared their physical and mental characteristics:

An elderly maiden sat one sunny afternoon in May engrossed with her knitting, while a crowd of boys were engaged in the great American game of baseball on the lot beneath her window. It would be superfluous to say they were noisy. From her viewpoint both noise and violent physical activity were unnecessary, disagreeable, and trying to one’s nerves. The nuisance must be suppressed. Accordingly she poked her head out of the window and directed a shrill scream at the disturbers of her peace, “Go away from here, you bad boys, and stop making that noise!” In a flash came back the retort, “G’wan away yourself!” while a boy grumbled to his companion, “She don’t know nothin’ ’bout having fun.” Both were right, judging from their respective points of view, and both were wrong when considered from the other’s viewpoint. Neither understood the other. Old age requires peace, silence, and cessation from physical activity. Youth requires noise, bustle, and violent exercise for its growth. Activity symbolizes success. Passivity spells failure.

The boy in athletics, like the adult laborer in his daily toil, uses the primary muscles of his arms, legs, and torso. With the development of his mentality, he develops and employs his secondary muscles. Psychology is intimately related to athletics. For this reason, the gymnastic apparatus which is suited to adults is wholly unsuited to boys, and this is quite apart from differences due to the unequal size and strength of the users. Witness the aversion of the boy to the use of Indian clubs whose intricate manipulations require the employment of the secondary muscles of the wrist and arm, while he willingly uses dumb bells which call into play his primary muscles.

His inability for sustained mental effort is coördinated with his disability for sustained physical effort. Hence he passes by, with a curiosity-satisfying trial, the chest weights and rowing machines of the adult which require the continuous expenditure of energy. So also the competitive spirit of boyhood must be gratified by the use of such gymnastic apparatus and games as develop competition. The boy will not exercise for exercise’s sake. He will not even do it to achieve the altruistic result of a strong physique. But he will exercise and play games to excel the other fellow. The boy who is alone in a gymnasium has as stupid a time as the boy who is compelled by necessity to play baseball with himself.

It would be interesting to learn the boy’s opinion of certain adults if he were able to accurately analyze and express his conclusions. The crabbed demeanor of the pessimist out of touch with boy-life is as offensive to the boy as the latter’s noise and giddiness are objectionable to the former. Observe the mental rheumatics of the misanthrope in these grouchy grumblings from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Wit Without Money”:

And from what a different vision-vantage were penned these lines, overflowing with love and understanding of childhood, which are a model of sympathetic comprehension of the child’s needs:

To understand the boy’s viewpoint we must be able to put ourselves in his place. We must renew our youth. The trouble with so many of us is that we never acquire juvenescence until second-childhood. We should be able to assign the boy to the psychological period to which he belongs by reason of his development, and thus knowing the mental and moral status of an inhabitant of that period, we are able to see things through his glasses. The mental myopia and moral astigmatism of youth will then be recognized as a defect of immaturity which training and years will cure. Juvenility may be reacquired in maturity if we string-halted adults would only seek rejuvenation at the fountain of youthful understanding where we may obtain a flood of knowledge concerning boy-life. The journey is apparently too long and too difficult for the lazy or indifferent grown-up. The heart of a boy is not worn on his sleeve. He reveals it only to those who command his perfect confidence and such confidence is given to those, and to those only, who understand him. The aloofness of children toward certain adults is because they have nothing in common. Each misunderstands the other. As it is obviously impossible for the child to understand and attune himself to adult mental processes, it becomes necessary for the adult to comprehend child-nature and to put himself in harmony with it.

Happy the man who can make himself a boy again! He retains a thousand joys which other adults have irretrievably lost. Such a one is a natural leader and teacher of boys. They delight to make him their hero. His influence with boys is commensurate with his understanding of life in Boyville. You must go to this juvenile city and live there, learn its laws, customs, and manners, and if possible place yourself in a sympathetic attitude of understanding without which you can never hope to be initiated into the mysteries of adolescence. The honor of being admitted to the confidence and fellowship of boys is not permitted to all men—only to those who have retained or who are able to acquire the boy’s viewpoint. “There is a wall around the town of Boyville,” says William Allen White, “which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut upon youth. An adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself banished among purblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville was old when Nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rules and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it have changed.”

The boy lives in the present, with little thought of the future; he is concerned with today, not the next decade. His mental processes do not prompt him to speculate as to the effect of present acts on future character. He has neither the mental nor moral equipment for such foresight or deduction; it is a task beyond his capabilities. This burden must be shouldered by the parent who should not only do the child’s thinking for him until the latter is able to do it for himself, but should also drill, train, and educate the boy until he is able to make nice distinctions between right and wrong, and should cultivate his will-power until he can school himself into an acceptance of the good as against the bad. Until the child’s mind, will, and moral sense have reached this stage of growth, the parent must substitute his own mind, will, and moral sense. In determining the degree of capability of a child’s offense, we should ask ourselves the question: “What is the developmental stage of his faculties which made the offense possible?” Harsh and stern estimates of childish frailties usually result from the application of the adult viewpoint and the adult standard. The failure to consider the viewpoint and standards of the adolescent causes much injustice to the boy and results in many mistakes in his training.

The brightness, joyousness, and optimism of youth suffuses life with an iridescent glow. All the world is bathed in roseate hues when seen through the rose-colored glasses of youth. When we get so old that we delight in sitting by the fire, toasting our slippered feet, and prefer to listen to our arteries harden rather than to hear the noise and laughter of boyhood, we are out of tune with the harmonies of boy-life.