IRREPRESSIBLE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4768, 24 October 1924, Page 3

IRREPRESSIBLE.

THE BOY AND HIS GANG. DUTY OF PARENTS. Mos’ boys are more easily handled by wholesalevthan by retail. Of all clannish creatures in time and space : the boy ijs probably the most clannish. SyThe Assassins of the Orient, the McCanns of Scotland; the Nihilists-, of Russia, or the Chinese White Wolves, are no more devoted to their fellow craffs than the boy to his gang, About a certain age the boy-bud begins to separate from his parent-stem. Up till then he has had no individuality ; it has been merged into the family He hats thought, believed, and acted as his brothers and sisters. But there comes that day when he returns from his play, and it seems as if he were a new personality. He is changed. His mother is nonplussed. Grandma wants to know “whatever has come over the child ?” The pious aunt is shocked. ' The cause that the boy has made a hew discovery. He has found a friend. It is almost as shatteringly wonderful when a boy experiences his flrit comradeship as when he first love. The parents cannot understand < it.’. Boys that lie and steal elsewheie will be loyal to the gang. The gangimorals and gang-ideas are more binding on him than anything that teacher and Sunday School can supply. For this reason boy-gangs should be selected carefully . and encouraged. A week’s tramp with a decent lot of Boy Scouts will do more good than a year’s parental advice. Do not imagine that you can repress rhe gang instinct in your boy. It is nature’s calling. It is for you, as your boy’s best friend, to help him find the right gang. For it is truer of him than of any of us grown-ups that the best and the worst of the individual is the company he plays with.