[Sidenote: Children's friendships.] In the pre-adolescent years parents and teachers should cooperate in developing a spirit of group fellowship between boys and girls and at the same time instill into the boys something of that chivalrous and protective attitude of boys towards girls such as one finds in the families of the highest culture. I emphatically mean "group fellowship," for it is certainly undesirable to encourage in pre-adolescents any tendency towards paired comradeship. It is certainly best that boys and girls should have many good friends of both sexes. The real truth back of the old adage "two is company and three is a crowd" makes the "crowd" highly desirable for both pre-adolescence and early adolescence, for in these years it is friendship and not romantic love that will be most helpful in the later life. As one step in this direction, all sensible adults should show their disfavor to the abominable habit of teasing small children concerning their best friends of the other sex. Parents and teachers will do some of the best work in the larger sex-education if they begin in pre-adolescent years to develop the social life of the children along lines similar to those suggested above. [Sidenote: Summary.] Summarizing, it is evident that there is very little direct sex-instruction suitable for pre-adolescent years. So far as the child's own life is concerned, it now seems clear that parents or other adult confidants must instruct individuals, or possibly small uniformly selected groups. Class instruction seems out of the question except for life-history studies of animals and plants. On the whole, then, there is nothing radical or impossible in the proposition that there should be a beginning of sex-education before the advent of adolescence. Sec. 26. _Hygienic and Educational Treatment of Unhealthful Habits_ [Sidenote: Problems of children.] All adults should take a sane and scientific view of the sex problems that are likely to come even to normal children. We must remember that they are born with sexual mechanisms that may easily and automatically lead into harmful habits unless parents and teachers guide hygienically and mentally along the lines that are known to offer safety. [Sidenote: Masturbation.] Concerning habitual manipulation of the sexual organs of either sex, known in medical literature as masturbation or self-abuse (often erroneously called "onanism"), there are certain facts that are important for the guidance of all parents and teachers. I discuss it in this connection since the problem often arises in the later years of the pre-adolescent period. [Sidenote: Does not indicate degeneracy.]