The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-01-13
Bad Traits
Youth Shows
Rarely Last
Parents Often Alarmed
by Normal Outbursts
of Adolescents.
BY GRETTA PALMER
Times Special Writer.

NEW YORK, Jan. 13.-"I should
~ saw remarked Mrs. Phyllis
Young. West orange history teach-
er TO a startled board Of education
that dancing girls, movie-struck
children and youngsters who were
born lazy comprise fully 10 per cent
of the enrolment Of my school.
The girls. she said. dramatic their
lives in terms of the motion picture
The bows look upon the bootlegger as
their ideal.
Did Mrs. Young ever hear IN her
own adolescence, Of Nick Carter pc
ing read by her boy associates? Dlo
she ever go to the local STOCK COM
panv performances to moon over the
profile of the handsome Leading
man?
There is nothing alarming about
the fact that the adolescents OF
West Orange are rather lurid.
Adolescents always are. 1t is an age
at which life appears to us in the
plise of a violent chrome. For the
15-year-old boy to admire the ex-
ploits Of a desperate is quite as nor
NAL as it is for a 15-minute-old boy
to cry. Both of them will Outgrow
their rather distressing habits when
they reach the proper age.
Fears Often UnfOunded
Life is an excellent educator and
one in which we should perhaps
place more faith. Parents are in
clined to look with horror on the
deficiencies of their growing chill
dren and to imagine that they will
carry these uncivilized traits with
them into mature life And how
insufferable they would be if they
did, Happily, however, they rare
ly do.
There is a period in life Of the
young child-it comes somewhere
around 3 or 4 years-when it is
quite normal to say mo" to any
proposition made by parent or
teacher or nurse.
The child will forecfully reject all
suggestions and be very perverse
and pig-headed little tot indeed.
Does this mean that he is going to
grow up to be a quarrelsome boor?
Certainly not. 1t simply means that
he is passing through a healthy
and necessary stage of defiance in
his progress toward independence.
He'll get over it when he is or so.
Don't Be Too Harsh
Many of the manifestations of
adolescence which scare mothers
and fathers half out of their wits
are no more significant than that
The girl who will read nothing but
movie fan magazines may quite con-
ceivably outgrow the taste and de-
velop an appreciation of Marcel
Proust before she dies.
The boy who gives every indi-
cation of a taste for low life at
the age of 10, probably will discover
that there are more interesting ia
Gets to existence than those which
are offered by the average poolroom.
If you don't take him too seriously
or bear down on him too hard, you
will find, some fine day, that he is
quite as well behaved as your huS-
band
Far worse calamities can befall
a person in life than standing near
the foot of his class in school. Far
more dire things may occur to the
adolescent than a cheap taste for
theatrical entertainment.
If we were a West Orange parent
we should receive news of the
school children's condition in an
utter calm. They sound to us like
a thoroughly normal lot of young
sters, with nothing wrong with
them that should not be wrong with
them at that age.