es possible for
parents and other adult confidants to explain many important truths as
to the proper use of his sex organs and as to his conduct towards
girls. All this can be done with the average boy of eleven or twelve
and with hundreds of even nine and ten without any fear of giving
information that is startlingly new and without any danger of giving a
nervous shock.

[Sidenote: Cautious teaching of girls.]

It is not so with average girls of equal ages, if we may accept the
opinion of many women who are trained in science and medicine. Specific
information as to the functional relationships of the two sexes is said
by many educated women to have been absolutely new and startling to
them at twenty and twenty-five years. Evidently there is a special
reason for gradual and cautious teaching of girls, and so it is
probably best, as many parents urge, that in pre-adolescent years the
girl's instruction in social-sexual lines be training in modest
deportment and a proper reserve towards boys. This ought to be
sufficient for the girl's protection until gradually in adolescent
years she learns the whole story of life, probably several years later
than her boy friends whose natural leadership in sexual activity makes
their early information desirable as a protection to both sexes.

[Sidenote: Children's friendships.]

In the pre-adolescent years parents and teachers should cooperate in
developing a spirit of group fellowship between boys and girls and at
the same time instill into the boys something of that chivalrous and
protective attitude of boys towards girls such as one finds in the
families of the highest culture. I emphatically mean "group
fellowship," for it is certainly undesirable to encourage in
pre-adolescents any tendency towards paired comradeship. It is
certainly best that boys and girls should have many good friends of
both sexes. The real truth back of the old adage "two is company and
three is a crowd" makes the "crowd" highly desirable for both
pre-adolescence and early adolescence, for in these years it is
friendship and not romantic love that will be most helpful in the later
life. As one step in this direction, all sensible adults should show
their disfavor to the abominable habit of teasing small children
concerning their best friends of the other sex. Parents and teachers
will do some of the best work in the larger sex-education if they begin
in pre-adolescent years to develop the social life of