By the age of four, children regularly meet to play beyond the family compound, with boys and girls generally segregating and roaming freely throughout the village. Boys play make-believe games, fly kites, plow imaginary fields, and hunt insects and harmless reptiles. Girls nurse make-shift. Gradually the children are drawn into work pattems. Around eight years of age, girls give increasing help with household chores and boys assume greater - responsibilities such as feeding domestic animals and guarding the family buffalo as it grazes or wallows.
Children attend the government village school to be taught from a standard nationwide curriculum.
All receive a comprehensive education and by coming into contact with neighbouring villages' children and visiting the provincial capital on - school trips they enjoy a broadening of social experience. Having assumed ever-increasing workloads and responsibilities, youths of 15 and 16 are already regarded as fully mature adult labourers. The village girl's entrance into adolescence is a gentle one. Courtship is confined initially to communal work groups during planting and harvesting and at monastery-centred festivals and activities. Emotional relationships mature slowly and customarily involve chaperoned meetings at the girl's house.