If we ourselves seek to maintain beauty, order, and kindliness in the conduct of the table, our children acquire a love of all that makes for beauty and order and kindliness, for righteousness in the little things of life. A clean tablecloth may be a means of grace. You have to try to live up to it. Order and quietness in eating are not separable from the rest of the life. To lift up life at any point is to raise the whole level. To let it down at any point is to let all down. But to lift up the level of conversation at the table is to raise the level of the entire occasion and to make it more than a period of eating, to convert it into a festival, a joyous occasion of the spirit. The meal should be in all things worthy of the unseen guest. How near we all come together at the table! In its freedom how clearly are we seen by our children! Here they know us for what we are and so learn to interpret life. I. Reference for Study _Table Talk._ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. II. Topics Tor Discussion 1. The relation of mental conditions to digestion. 2. The relation of table-etiquette to life-habits. 3. The table as an opportunity for the grace of courtesy, and the relation of this grace to Christian character. 4. Training children in listening as well as in talking at table. 5. Do you regard table-talk and table-manners as having any directly religious values? Why? CHAPTER XV THE BOY AND GIRL IN THE FAMILY Much that has been said so far has had in mind only the problems of dealing with younger children in the life of the home. Indeed, almost all literature on education in the family is devoted to the years prior to adolescence. But older boys and girls need the family and the family needs them. Many of the more serious problems of youth with which society is attempting to deal are due to the fact that from the age of thirteen on boys have no home life and girls, especially in the cities, are deprived of the home influences. § 1. THE GROWING BOY The life of the family must have a place for the growing boy. It must make provision for his physical needs; these are food, activity, rest, and shelter. Youth is a period of physical crisis. Health is the basis of a sound moral life. Many of the lad's apparently strange propensities are due to the physical changes taking place in his body and, often, to the fact that it is assumed that his rugged frame needs no care or attention.[35] It will take more than tearful pleading to hold him to his home; he can be held only by its ministry to him; he will be there if it is the most attractive place for him. Some parents who are praying for wandering boys would know why they wandered if they looked calmly at the crowded quarters given to the boy, the comfortless room, the makeshift bed, and the general home organization which long ago assumed that a boy could be left out of the reckoning.