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Show Kn I hi ecu Norris Says: Wild Oals for Daughters B.ll B,ndlc.t. WNU rs.turel. 'fl, my "Betty-Lou uiui not yet fourteen when she came home to breakfast one morning morn-ing bedraggled and exhausted, having danced all night at the country club and various night clubs." By KATHLEEN NORRIS "TT USED to be the boys I who sowed the wild oats and the girls who stayed home," writes a heartbroken mother from a suburb near Toledo. "But in these days it seems to be the other way! My boys, now 24 and 20, both in the services, have been the comfort and pride of my life. Their sister, now 16, has given her father and me infinite cause for anxiety and is now in real trouble. "We live in a college town; Betty-Lou was not fourteen when she came in to breakfast one morning bedraggled and exhausted, having danced all night at the country coun-try club and various night clubs. She had been drinking and was in a condition con-dition to horrify anyone who loved her. Only her father and I were home, and we did what we could. We reminded her, after she had had coffee, a bath and some hours of sleep, that hers is a comfortable, hospitable home, that we have always al-ways tried to give her every advantage, advan-tage, and that our hopes for her had been bitterly shaken by her behavior. be-havior. I was obliged to tell her that hereafter when she told me she wanted to stay with a school friend I would telephone that friend to check on the matter. But both Joe and I regarded this as the recklessness reckless-ness of a defiant child, and while we watched her carefully, we did not take this first outbreak too seriously. Now I know that it was by no means an isolated instance. "That Christmas we took all the children east to my mother's place, and there was a dance among the cousins to which I permitted Betty-Lou Betty-Lou to go; she had her first formal evening dress and was much petted and praised. At the end of the evening eve-ning she and a boy of 21 disappeared; disap-peared; next morning, after a night of horror for us, they were found at a Baltimore hotel; the boy asleep in a chair in the lobby, Betty-Lou and another girl, a girl they had picked up at some night club, asleep upstairs. up-stairs. Expelled From School. "When we came back we tried boarding-school, but last November, In her third half-term there, she was quietly dropped for repeatedly breaking break-ing bounds and disappearing for hours at a time. "This Christmas-time her behavior be-havior was so reckless that night after night her father and I lay awake waiting to hear her return from various entertainments, sometimes some-times at two or three o'clock, and sometimes in a state that showed us she had been drinking. Threats are no use; we cannot seem to reach her soul or heart at all. Yet ours is a good home, and we have always tried to keep about her decent and developing influences. "Last night a young marine, 20 years old, called on my husband and m.e and said that he was 'willing' to marry our daughter if we wished it. Betty-Lou was at a movie with some young friends; we could only gather, from this young man's talk, that he felt obliged to make this suggestion. When Betty-Lou came in she denied everything, said that the boy was romancing, and that she wouldn't marry him under any circumstances. But his serious, apologetic manner made a terrible impression on both Joe and myself. "Now, what are we to do? Here Is this girl, not yet 17, who knows neither law nor affection, who is as hard as flint, and who is going to go her own way no matter what we do. i i 1 IN VAIN REGRET The grief - stricken mother who writes tliis letter is faced witli an alarming problem. Her young daughter, tvlio has had all the advantages of a good home and devoted parents, has groicn wild, unreasonable and headstrong. Without a doubt she is doomed to the greatest misery, once her little lit-tle "fling" is over, unless some-tiling some-tiling can be done to keep her from wasting her precious youth, then spending the rest of her hopeless life in vain regret. In what way have we failed her? We are not church members, but Betty-Lou and her brothers went to Sunday School when they were small, and every lesson in honesty, integrity, self-control that -the boys have had she has had, too. She must be a throw-back to some ancestor an-cestor of whom we are ignorant, for both my husband's people and mine have always been law-abiding, gentle, gen-tle, good men and women. Must I let this child go on until she does something that destroys her chances of happiness forever? How can I save her from herself? You must have handled cases as desperate as this one, and must be able to understand under-stand that, as far as we know, she has no excuse for treating us this way. What shall we do?" Many Girls Ruin Own Lives. This is a sad letter, and all the sadder to me because I know of no answer. Sometimes the kindest, gentlest, most intelligent of parents find themselves with a child whose cold, hard, reckless nature is a complete com-plete mystery and often completely inefficient parents have sons and daughters who are the greatest pride and honor to them. I know of one fine young lawyer, upright and intelligent in-telligent and successful, whose mother deserted him and ran off with a lover, when he was only three, and whose father then made a most unfortunate marriage, which ended in his being taken away from the custody of his own people. And I know a brother and sister, both married now, both parents, both unusually un-usually fine persons, whose mother's life was an actual scandal, the children chil-dren themselves having been dragged into court on one occasion to testify in a particularly unsavory suit. And on the other hand there are many cases like that of Betty-Lou, a young girl with every advantage of background and cultivation, who seems determined to ruin her own life and the happiness of those who love her. Affection and patience are the only cure, as far as her parents are concerned. They must go on lov Ing her, forgiving her, trying to help her, until her own eyes are opened. And that awakening may not come until she has learned a bitter lesson. les-son. Our town had a Betty-Lou when I was a girl. A fluffy-headed little beauty named Bessy; who laughed at the prudishness and dullness of the other girls' lives, and boasted of her conquests when the rest of us were begging the virtuous mothers of the nineties please to let us wear corsets and put up our hair. Bessy got into an escapade with a married mar-ried man when she was 17, had a bad scare and quieted down for awhile, married in haste at 19, was divorced two years later, surrendering surrender-ing her little boy to his father, and married again at about the time her contemporaries were blissfully considering con-sidering their first marital venture. |