* ADOLESCENCE *

What is the difference between childhood and adolescence? They differ in many things, but there is no clear division: all the changes are gradual, and other period features overlap and grow into each other.
 Conditionally, the boundary between childhood and adolescence can be defined as when a person shows a meaningful interest in the opposite sex. For example, one day, when the bathhouse is heated up, the mother, grandmother or sister prepares a boy to wash, and he suddenly begins to act up, hang back and throw out the "tricks." -"Well, now you're going to wash with your father!" - calmly said grandma.
     And, all at once, it falls into place. Sister, and sometimes the mother, did not know what was going on, why the brother or son began to mutter something under his nose and elbowing. The overall moral atmosphere did not require any special sex education. It spared fledgling adolescent self-esteem, encouraging modesty and chastity. Observing the lives of farm animals, people have gradually learned about basic physiology in their childhood.
  There was no need to explain how and why a child was born, what occupied the bride and groom on the wedding night, etc. This was not mentioned because everything that goes without saying and talking about it is unnecessary, indecent, and unacceptable.
    Such modesty from adolescence passes into youth, often maintained for a lifetime. It gave the stability of romantic feelings, which arranges not only sexual but also social relations. In adolescence comes a man's first and most often not the last infatuation, the first love with all its psychological bouquet. Before that, boys or girls were "rehearsing" their first real love by the previous enthusiasm for adult "objects" of the opposite sex. And if such a frivolous infatuation is ridiculed, make fun of both. The first true love is usually spared, and the family tries not to notice. Moreover, a teenager could keep his fiery secret not worse than an adult. The mystery is often revealed only in youth when the feeling is legalized by public opinion.
     The circumstances surrounding the first love explain all the behavioural features at this age. If previously, as kids, people were open, and now they become insulated, the frankness with family and friends has been replaced by silence and sometimes rudeness.
    Streetlife is also imperceptibly transformed. In childhood, boys and girls played the same games together. In adolescence, they often play separately and make fun of each other.
Building a boy's character largely depended on the teenager's games. Relationships in these games were particular. For adults, they sometimes seemed simply cruel.
    If the family was allowed leniency for a teenager, even tenderness, then a Spartan spirit reined in the peer relationship (especially in games). No allowances for age or physical handicaps existed.
Often, testing his physical endurance or being provoked, the teenager enters the game unprepared. As a result, he would "hounded" without pity the whole evening, and if he did not recoup, they moved the game to the next day. It is difficult to imagine the state of a loser, but even more, he would have suffered if peers felt pity for him and left the situation as it was. (This is only about sports and physical competitions, not intellectual endeavours.)
Adults reluctantly tried not to interfere. But nevertheless, it was absolutely fundamental: to break out, win, and win himself without assistance. One such victory while still in adolescence turns a boy into a man.
 Games for the girls did not have a similar focus; they differed by calm, lyrical playing relationship. Of course, a young person's life is allowed to have time to engage freely in games. But they have already been supplanted by more serious business, not excluding elements of the game.
    First, the teenager is increasingly drawn into the work process. Secondly, games are increasingly replaced by entertainment, peculiar to youth. Finally, adolescents of both sexes may have to mow the grass, harrow, pull, cart, hang flax, cut pine twigs, and tear bark.
 Of course, all this was done under the adults' invisible guidance and close supervision. Competition, or working, gaming and other rivalries are especially characteristic of youth. An adolescent sometimes had to hold back because he wanted to learn to plow before his peers, so all the girls, big and small, have seen it. He wants to cut wood more than a neighbour so that no one calls him a little boy or lazy. He wants to catch fish for mother's pies and gather a few berries to treat younger kids.
     Fantastic combination of a child's privileges and the responsibilities of adults observed in this period of life! But no matter how good childhood privileges are, youth were already ashamed of them, and if they used them, then with caution. So, he could still complain and beg his mother for a tasty treat at home, in the family, among his younger siblings. But if in the house turned out to be peers or just strangers, being "a little one" was shameful.
Consequently, for adolescents, an unwritten code of conduct existed. The boy at this age should have been able to (tried, anyway) make a handle, tie fishnets, harness a horse, cut pine twigs, tear bark, herd the cattle to graze, and fish. But, instead, he was ashamed to cry. He knew that fallen is not beaten, and two do not attack one, that, if made a bet, the word must be kept.
Girls at age twelve spun a the lot and well learned to weave, sew, helped to mow, knew how to knead bread and cakes, although they were not trusted with this, as the boys were not charged with such tasks as grinding an axe, killing a cock or a sheep, ride without adults to the mill.
Adolescents have the right to invite their relatives or friends of the same age; visitors could sit at a table like adults, but they could only drink non-alcoholic drinks. They imitated more senior guys who were "having fun" for real at youth gatherings. Time existed to exit the excess energy and meet the needs for self-indulgence and deliberate valour - the Yuletide. Public opinion was not exactly encouraging then, but it condescended to teenage pranks. Have fun for Christmas week, and then please behave like decent people all year. A year is a great deal. So, get used to the festive antics. There wasn't enough time. They are approaching a different time of life.
«An unbecoming girl laughs and talks with everybody, runs around the suspicious places and streets, baring breasts, sits down close to the strangers, elbows and not sitting quietly, but sings profane songs, and gets drunk. Then, gallops on tables and benches, let her be dragged to all corners like a bitch. For where there is no shame, there is no humility. Of which questioning said Lyukretsiya the truth: if a girl loses shame and honour, what else is left?" -" Youth honest Mirror" manuscript from the XVI century.