ervice one needs to be a whole person,
with opportunity to give undivided attention and undiminished powers to
the struggle of life.

Secondly, this is peculiarly the period of the joy of friendships. The
social nature must have its food. This young man has discovered that the
world consists of something besides things; it is full of people. He is
just learning that they are all persons like himself. He enters the era
of conscious personal relationships. He would explore the realm of
personality. He touches great heights of happiness as other lives are
opened to him. It is all new and wonderful, this realm of personality,
with its aspects of feeling, thinking, willing, and longing.

Sec. 3. MAINTAINING FRIENDSHIP WITH YOUTH

Do parents know how hungry their older children are for their
friendship? They will never tell us, for this world is too new and
strange for facile description; they are always bashful about their
hunger for persons until they find the same hunger and joy in us. We
imagine that they are indifferent to us; the trouble is we are hidden
from them. We seldom give them a chance to talk as friend to friend,
not about trifling things, but about life itself and what it means.
Perhaps at no point do parents exhibit less ability for sympathetic
reconstruction and interpretation of their own lives than here. They
recall the pleasures of childhood and provide those pleasures for the
children. Why not recall the hunger of eighteen years of age and give
these youths the very bread of our own inner selves? Or do we, when they
ask this bread, give them the stone of mere provision for their physical
needs or the scorpion of careless indulgence in things that debase the
tastes?

One perplexing phenomenon must not be overlooked: it will often happen
that young people pass through a period of what appears to be parental
aversion. There will sometimes seem to be suspicion, violent opposition,
and even hatred of parents. This is no occasion for despair. It is a
stage of development. It is due to the attempt of a will now realizing
its freedom under social conditions to adapt itself to the will that has
hitherto directed it. To some degree the sex consciousness, which leads
to viewing the parents in a new light, may enter in. It may be easily
made permanent, however, if parents do not do two things: first, adjust
themselves and their methods to the new social freedom of the youth,
and, secondly, fling open the doors