父母往往会在子女称赞朋友家庭时感到不安——将其视为对自己的烹饪、整洁或家具的轻视——而且常常愚蠢地让青少年察觉到他们的恼怒。
Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed.
他们甚至可能指责子女不忠诚，或是对朋友的父母发表刻薄的评论。
They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends' parents.
成年人这种自我尊严的丧失以及对幼稚行为的堕入，令青少年深感震惊，并使他们下定决心：今后再不向父母谈及自己所到之处或所见之人。
Such a loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part of the adults deeply shocks the adolescents, and makes them resolve that in future they will not talk to their parents about the places or people they visit.
不出多久，父母便会抱怨孩子如此封闭，从不向他们倾诉任何事，但他们却很少意识到，这一切都是他们自己一手造成的。
Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything, but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves.
对父母的幻灭，无论他们作为父母和作为个体而言多么出色称职，在某种程度上都是不可避免的。
Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable.
大多数孩子对父母的理想化期望之高——除非父母本身确实令人失望——以至于这种期望几乎无法经受现实评估的考验。
Most children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation.
父母若意识到子女对其品格与无谬性通常抱有多么深厚的信念，以及这份信念对一个孩子而言意味着多么重大，他们将会大为震惊，深为感动。
Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this faith means to a child.
如果父母能对这种青春期的反应有所心理准备，并意识到这是孩子正在成长、正在发展宝贵的观察力与独立判断力的标志，他们就不会受到如此伤害，因而也不会因怨恨和抵制而将孩子逼入对立的位置。
If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and realized that was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment, they would not be so hurt, and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.
青少年因其对真诚的热切追求，始终尊重那种能够承认自己有错、无知，乃至曾经不公平或不公正的父母。
The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity, always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust.
孩子无法宽恕的，是父母在孩子明知其指责属实时仍拒绝承认的态度。
What the child cannot forgive is the parents' refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true.
维多利亚时代的父母相信，退守于一种蛮不讲理的威权姿态便能维护自己的尊严——实际上他们根本没有做到这一点，只不过当时的孩子被吓得太厉害，不敢让他们知道自己的真实感受。
Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude in fact they did nothing of the kind, but children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt.
当今我们往往走向另一个极端，但总体而言，这对孩子和父母双方来说，都是一种更为健康的态度。
Today we tend to go to the other extreme, but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent.
直面现实始终是更明智、更稳妥的选择，无论当下有多么痛苦。
It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment.