"Every mother and every girl should read this article, for in it her mental and physical powers take on form... It is the road that guides her to the happy life..."

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In older times people believed that puberty — the beginning of adolescence — occurred suddenly, like a decisive revolution, and that with the appearance of menstru-ation the girl became a woman overnight, cutting every tie with childhood and putting on a new personality in her body and in her mind.

But modern research in physi-ology and psychology shows us that, apart from the awakening of the latent reproductive function, no sudden revolutionary changes occur in the years of puberty — life runs on like a quiet river, not like the violent torrent whose course is broken by waterfalls. Life is a coherent whole, alike in its parts; its first signs appear in childhood, and it continues, the same in its essential features, through adolescence and maturity.

Just as children are affected by the attitudes and acts of grown-ups without understanding them, so it is with the adolescent girl. If we change our attitude toward this age and stop regarding it as a perilous stage or a great crisis in the girl's life, our own feeling and reassurance pass over to her; she becomes in turn calm and confident, looking at things naturally, and her problems solve themselves. Yet how many a girl do we see chafing at the company of her family for the misplaced attention she sees them paying her.

Many are the influences to which the child is subject as he grows; the chief of them is the influence of the school and the teachers, who are the mother's right hand

and her helpers in bringing up the child. But there is also the assis-tance of the doctor and the nurse, and the influence of neighbors, playmates and friends, books, newspapers, advertisements, the radio, the cinema, and parties. All this, in addition to the child's own personality, which responds to those influences and shapes them according to its particular inclinations. There arises, then, a continuous interplay between the factors acting on him and his response to those factors.

When the mother wants to choose for the child what she thinks useful for him, she is bound to be influenced by her own inclinations and her past experiences. So too the father, when he imposes his opinions and whims on the child. Imagine, then, the little one's state as he tries, through the various factors surrounding him, to express his own self, and at the same time to keep pace with his surroundings and follow the current.

Your duty then, O mother, is to guide your child — not from one side only, but from all sides, bodily, mental, and spiritual; and, amid the chaos of the influences that surround him, to lead him to what suits him, not to what suits

you. You must study his needs and his inclinations, what he loves and what he hates; and you cannot detect any deviation or abnormal-ity in him unless you have studied other, normal infants and children. Ask the doctor, if need be, and he will give you the necessary direc-tions; report your observations to him precisely and faithfully, and his help to you will be the more useful and the more effective.

It goes without saying that the child is influenced by you first of all, and imitates many of your attitudes, movements, and habits in an imperceptible way; and that the happy childhood the child lives in a happy family is the foundation that will make of him, in the future, a devoted patriot and the head of a successful family. And you are the cornerstone of that building.

The Adolescent Girl's Diet

Although the adolescent girl needs no special treatment in the matter of food, we must not forget that the tissues of her body grow more active and that she needs the starchy and sugary foods that generate energy. Her appetite therefore sharpens — or is spoiled by a craving for sweets and for appetite-provoking foods, heavily spiced or odd