general, but it is especially valuable as a means of diverting the
thoughts and feelings from the growing consciousness of sex.

One of the reasons why it now becomes more difficult for even
thoughtful and considerate parents to keep in close sympathy with
the boy or girl is this outburst of new and varied interests, which
clamor for movement and color and quick changes. The parent has in
the course of years settled down to a relatively small group of
activities and interests, most of which offer no appeal to the
growing individual. For instance, you would like to come close to
the thoughts and feelings of your growing son or daughter; you
suggest that you take a walk together. Now, it is very nice for a
middle-aged person to take a walk, alone or with a companion; but
the girl or boy sees no sense in taking a walk unless you wish to
get somewhere. The ordinary conversation and gossip that a girl is
likely to hear when you take her to visit a friend is apt to be very
stupid--to the girl. Even where the parents have watched the
expanding soul closely on the one hand, and have kept themselves in
touch with a variety of activities rich in human interests on the
other, they often find that the intimacy with their children is for
a time weakened, and fully restored only after the latter have
passed through these trying years.

What is likely to be the greatest source of grief on the part of the
parent is the apparent lapse of the growing boy or girl from
standards of honesty and truthfulness with which she has so
solicitously tried to imbue him or her. But this lapse during the
critical growing period is so widespread, so common among boys and
girls who afterward become fine men and women, that special students
of the problem have come to believe that semi-criminality is quite