[00:01.52]Lesson 34
[00:03.52]Adolescence
[00:11.28]What do adolescents respect in parents?
[00:17.24]Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends
[00:22.24]and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture,
[00:28.00]and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed.
[00:33.73]They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends' parents.
[00:41.56]Such a loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part of the adults
[00:47.79]deeply shocks the adolescents, and makes them resolve that in future
[00:53.00]they will not talk to their parents about the places or people they visit.
[00:58.22]Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything,
[01:05.95]but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves.
[01:10.95]Disillusionment with the parents,
[01:13.29]however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals,
[01:18.52]is to some degree inevitable.
[01:21.47]Most children have such a high ideal of their parents,
[01:25.02]unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory,
[01:28.42]that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation
[01:33.65]Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized
[01:38.55]how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility,
[01:44.35]and how much this faith means to a child.
[01:48.02]If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction,
[01:51.64]and realized that was a sign that the child was growing up
[01:55.54]and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment,
[02:00.60]they would not be so hurt,
[02:02.50]and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.
[02:09.25]The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity,
[02:12.82]always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant,
[02:17.84]or even that he has been unfair or unjust.
[02:22.31]What the child cannot forgive is the parents' refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true.
[02:31.01]Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude
[02:40.18]in fact they did nothing of the kind,
[02:43.23]but children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt.
[02:49.03]Today we tend to go to the other extreme,
[02:52.59]but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent.
[02:58.39]It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment.