Actions continue to be largely impulsive, carried out according to the
strongest present desire, and though right and wrong are more clearly
understood than formerly, they do not often determine an act unsupported
by other considerations. This is evident in the matter of obedience,
whose strengthening into a habit is one of the most imperative tasks of
nurture during childhood. Abstract laws and principles of right, so
weighty in middle adolescence, have but slight influence over the child,
unless joined with them is a strong personality whom the child loves or
fears, and whose favor he desires to win through obeying.

There are certain modifications of earlier characteristics, which demand
more than a passing notice, because they necessitate greater change in
the methods of nurture.


ACTIVITY

Though the restlessness of the preceding period is still in evidence,
more and more activity is becoming purposeful and willed. While the
child continues to love activity for itself, he is more interested in
what it will accomplish than formerly, but an end is not yet
sufficiently attractive in itself to hold him to an unpleasant activity
for its achievement. For example, he enjoys both the weaving and the
basket, the pasting and the scrap-book, but if pasting and weaving were
laborious and difficult, he would not voluntarily go through them to
obtain the basket or the scrap-book.

It must be noted further, that activity still expends itself more
readily in the realm of the physical than the mental, though there is
increasing pleasure in the quest for knowledge, if wisely directed. The