As he walks away on his own two feet--the toddler's body-mind has reached its moment of perfection. The world is his and he the mighty conqueror of all he beholds.... As long as mother sticks around in the wings, the mighty acrobat confidently performs his trick of twirling in circles, walking on tiptoe, jumping, climbing, staring, naming. He is joyous, filled with his grandeur and wondrous omnipotence.

The invisible bond that gives the baby rein to discover his place in the world also brings the creeping baby back to home base....In this way he recharges himself. He refuels on the loving energies that flow to him from his mother. Then he's off for another foray of adventure and exploration.

In all times and in all places--in Constantinople, northwestern Zambia, Victorian England, Sparta, Arabia, . . . medieval France,Babylonia, . . . Carthage, Mahenjo-Daro, Patagonia, Kyushu, . . . Dresden--the time span between childhood and adulthood, however fleeting or prolonged, has been associated with the acquisition of virtue as it is differently defined in each society. A child may be good and morally obedient, but only in the process of arriving at womanhood or manhood does a human being become capable of virtue--that is, the qualities of mind and body that realize society's ideals.

It is an odd fact that what we now know of the mental and emotional life of infants surpasses what we comprehend about adolescents. . . . That they do not confide in us is hardly surprising. They use wise discretion in disguising themselves with the caricatures we design for them. And unfortunately for us, as for them, too often adolescents retain the caricatured personalities they had merely meant to try on for size.

Another reason for the increased self-centeredness of an adolescent is her susceptibility to humiliation. This brazen, defiant creature is also something tender, raw, thin-skinned, poignantly vulnerable. Her entire sense of personal worth can be shattered by a frown. An innocuous clarification of facts can be heard as a monumental criticism.

Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

Normally an infant learns to use his mother as a "beacon of orientation" during the first five months of life. The mother's presence is like a fixed light that gives the child the security to move out safely to explore the world and then return safely to harbor.