These are immensely valuable lessons for children. Younger children,
whose habits are more easily formed can not realize the importance of
it so that the responsibility must rest upon you, the parents. See to
it that right habits are formed and wrong ones avoided or corrected if
they now exist. They will thank you for it many times in later years.
Repeat any of the exercises given for sense training and prolong them
for development of attention and concentration.
An unusually successful physician tells how his mother developed his
conscious attention. Each time she told him to do something or sent him
upon an errand she would require him to repeat to her just what she had
told him to do. If he could not he had to stand and think it over, and
if he had not paid good attention he was punished.
Sometimes he was given instructions and when he had left the house was
called back and required to repeat in detail where he was going and
what he was to do and say. By this method he learned to pay attention
and thereby to remember well. In the practice of his profession he used
this idea, requiring the parent or nurse to repeat his instructions
for the care of the patient and the use of the medicine, in this way
avoiding omissions and improving the result.
Follow this plan and help your children to learn to pay attention and
to remember when told once.
What Is Concentration?
An uninterrupted continuation of the flow of thought and undivided
attention is concentration. It is the result of a well-regulated
and controlled thought process. It is accomplished by patient and
persistent effort. It is a reward of the highest value. There is
no real effort connected with it, but you become so engrossed and
interested in your thought that you are conscious of nothing else.
Everything else is excluded and your whole consciousness is concentered
upon one thought.
One moment's complete concentration will go farther toward the mastery
of a lesson or solution of your problem than much time spent in idle,
disconnected thought.
This is a faculty not easily mastered, but when once harnessed and
under your control has the greatest constructive power.