[00:00.49]Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed.
[00:16.60]They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends' parents.
[00:24.20]Such loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part to their parents about the place or people they visit.
[00:40.17]Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything,
[00:47.88]but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves.
[00:52.45]Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable.
[01:02.51]Most children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation.
[01:13.95]Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this faith means to a child.
[01:27.72]If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and realized that it was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment,
[01:40.25]they would not be so hurt, and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.
[01:48.34]The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity, always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust.
[02:00.99]What the child cannot forgive is the parent's refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true.
[02:08.90]Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude;
[02:17.64]in fact they did nothing of the kind, but children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt.
[02:26.15]Today we tend to go to the other extreme, but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent.
[02:35.21]It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment.
