YOUR BOY AND
HIS TRAINING

A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON BOY-TRAINING

BY
EDWIN PULLER
FORMER PRESIDENT, SCOUTMASTERS’ ASSOCIATION OF ST. LOUIS

NEW YORK LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1916

The average boy is not understood by the averageparent. This misunderstanding produces not only indifferenttraining of the boy but also soul-stress for theparent and his son. Intelligent training will improvethe quality of the man into whom your son will develop.To be able to give such training, the parentmust first know how. The education of the parentin the subject of boy-training is the pretentious purposeof this volume, which I approach with full consciousnessof my own limitations.

This book is the result of my association with andstudy of large numbers of boys from ten to twentyyears of age, and in it have been embodied, consciouslyor unconsciously, some ideas of other writers on thissubject.

I have endeavored to present in elementary form abrief, practical study in adolescent psychology and itsapplication to boy-training, written in language whichthe average parent, guardian or teacher can readilyunderstand. With this end in view, there has beenan elimination of technical terms, as far as may be—evenat possible risk of scientific inaccuracy of statement.It will not be necessary for the average readerto peruse these pages with a dictionary at hand. They[viii]were written not for psychologists, but for parents, inthe hope that a work both readable and comprehensiblewill acquaint the average reader with the laws governingboy-life and their application to his training withgreater clarity than a work abounding in abstrusephraseology and scientific nomenclature.

The pages which follow will be devoted to a discussionof the problems of the normal boy—the samered-blooded, harum-scarum youngster who occupiessuch a large place in your life—and not especiallyto the delinquent boy. I indulge the hope that thisvolume may aid you, in some degree, to a betterunderstanding of your boy, his problems and theirsolution.

Edwin Puller.