Part 5

The element of expectancy also affects the results of attention. The thing you expect is the thing most easily found. If you wish to aid a friend who is searching for a lost article you first learn as nearly as possible just what it looks like, so that you may know what you are expected to find.

=Exercise.=--In the following lines count all the 5s.

5 0 3 4 2 6 5 7 4 6 7 8 9 8 0 7 6 8 7 5 4 3 5 7 6 5 4 3 7 93758432657374596870234265834985672230986574

Notice how readily the other digits pass before your eyes in more or less indistinct rows, but the 5s stand out more clearly. This is caused by your expectancy, your attention is fixed upon this one digit and cares nothing for others. Count the 9s and note the change of expectancy. Use any selected letter in this paragraph for additional practice.

Cure for Diverted Attention

It is not the easiest thing to learn to control and to prolong the attention, but it is one of the most important. Great results are never easily accomplished. Easily diverted attention is a contributing cause of failure in every undertaking and if allowed to continue, will become habitual absent-mindedness. See to it that your child does not acquire this unfortunate handicap.

The cure for diverted attention is to enter whole-heartedly and wholly into everything that you do, no matter how trivial it may be, do not change or lose your enthusiasm over it until fully completed. If you discover something more desirable, put it aside for the time being and attend to the thing started, until you have finished.

Learn to use better judgment about what you start, and when started, never change. It is the tendency to change which you are striving to overcome.

When one thing is finished go directly and enthusiastically to the next, without hesitation or indecision. If uncertain, learn to make a decision and go through with it to the end, and then do the better things which may have suggested themselves after starting.

Parent Is Child's Interpreter

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.

Exercise for Concentration

The following exercises are valuable for prolonged periods of concentration, for developing the visual faculty, and exercising the productive imagination. They will prove of great worth to adults in helping with the construction and definite visualization of their life ideals and business problems. By this process you can easily learn to direct concentrated thought power to the bringing about of your plans and ideals.

The Construction of a Home

Visualize a forest, into which some lumbermen are coming. See them cutting the trees, sawing them into mill lengths, and donkey engines drawing them to the railroad. They are loaded and hauled to the mill, where they are converted into lumber. See as much detail as you know of the mill processes.

The lumber is loaded on cars, shipped to the city, unloaded in a lumber yard, sold and hauled to the spot in the city where a house is to be erected. Follow the erection of the house, watch all the details of its construction until fully completed and the occupants have moved in and established their home. Furnish the house, each room separately, and arrange and cultivate the grounds.

This exercise can be continued as far as you desire to prolong the period of concentration. Add all possible detail which will depend upon the amount of knowledge which you possess along these lines. Some parts of the work you will be able to follow in detail, others you may know little about. If there is some other kind of construction that you are more familiar with you can use it in order to make the visualization definite.

See to it that your concentration is complete, do not allow your mind to wander. Keep this picture moving so as to hold the complete attention, become interested in the development of each process. Prolong the period of concentration as far as possible.

This and the following exercises may be too complicated for your children, according to their age, but some of the simpler ones should be begun as early as eight years. The length and detail increasing with the ability and knowledge.

Remember that the children should be gathering knowledge by sensations. Those parts of the former picture, of the Construction of a Home, with which they are unfamiliar, should be brought to their attention. Describing the processes to them is good, but far better for them to get the original sensations for themselves. Take them to the forest, to the mill and lumber yard. Let them go where a house is being built and spend as much time there as possible. Parents should be purposefully adding to their children's stock of knowledge.

The Farmer and His Farm

See a settler going into an unsettled country and beginning the construction of a farm. Watch him build his cabin, clear the land, break the virgin soil and put in the crops. See the development of the home, the well, the fences, barn, sheds, enlargement of fields, bringing on of stock, the harvesting of crops, building of greater barns, the new home, settling of the community. Continue the development of the farm as much in detail and as far as you can.

The Farmer and His Crop

Visualize the first breaking of the field in the spring, the preparation of the soil for sowing, bringing of the seed corn from winter storage, the planting, cultivating, and growth of the crop. Watch the ripening, the cutting, shocking, husking, hauling and storing into barns.

Now follow the corn to the mill and through the processes of manufacture until it arrives on the table as corn flakes, syrup or corn bread.

Do this with the other crops. Follow the wheat until it is bread. The buckwheat to the steaming hot cakes. The same can be done with the stock on stock farms. The different kinds of farming can be used for variety. The great wheat farms present different pictures from the usual diversified ones.

The fruit orchard presents an interesting picture to work with. The spraying, the cultivating, irrigating, and all the process from the blossoming to the picking, sorting, packing, transportation and sale.

This same plan can be followed with all industries and manufacture of any article. Take the ore from the mine to the steel in the building or battleship. The oil from the well to gasoline in the auto tank. The automobile from metal, wood, leather and rubber to the picnic in the woods.

The Growing Plant

To visualize the growth of a seed or plant is interesting and helpful. Prepare the soil, plant the seed, see the little hair roots start out from the seed, the first green sprout, the breaking of the soil, the gradual growth, the leafing, branching, budding, and flowering. Hold your mind upon all pictures which you are visualizing. Direct it consciously, do not let it wander. Use motion, color, vividness of detail, everything that will aid concentration.

For this exercise younger children can use the making of a kite, building of a sand castle or doll house; a Hallowe'en party; a trip to the woods. Let him start with the well-known and familiar and lead him up to the unknown, which will develop a desire upon his part for more definite knowledge of the subject.

The chief factor in observation and in acquiring knowledge is Attention and Concentration. These can be produced by curiosity and the desire to excel, which is found in the love of competition and the game spirit. A good example of concentration is found in the juggler or acrobat on the vaudeville stage or in the circus. The ability to concentrate will grow with the doing of the exercises and playing games such as are mentioned here.

Any exercises or games which will result in improved ability to concentrate and pay attention are valuable. Play the games with the child, use any method or idea which suggests itself if it gets results. Give the child a conscious realization of the possession and value of this power. See to it that he continues to develop it.

THE IMAGINATION

Even in the simple exercises for the development of the senses you have been continuously required to draw upon the child's imagination. Most children are blessed with a vivid, active imagination and use it continuously in their play and self-entertainment. The reason that this wonderful faculty is so useless to the average adult is largely caused by a misunderstanding of the faculty on the part of the parent and perhaps the teacher.

=Imagination is the reproduction, in mental images, of those sensations which have previously been experienced.=

Most children use both reproductive and the productive imagination easily. There is, however, considerable difference in the amount of use and benefit which they derive from it.

=Reproductive imagination is reproducing the literal copy of the sensations.=

=Productive imagination is the forming of a new image made up of elements from previous images.=

There is natural individuality in imagination and a difference in method and in inclination to use the faculty. Some children reproduce vivid images which are to them real and impressive and by the use of which they amuse themselves for hours. Others reproduce indistinct images which have no attractiveness, are dim, uncertain, and of little value or consequence.

Do not expect the imagination of two children necessarily to operate in the same way, and above all, do not insist upon the same results. If you wish to know what the difference is in this faculty of visual reproduction you can use some definite test, such as the one following.

Test for Visual Reproduction

The Preparation--Take particular care in the arrangement of the breakfast table in certain known order, so that you will later be able to know exactly what was on it and where it stood. Put on the table some article of distinct color. If there is any question of your being able to check accurately the arrangement leave the table as it is for an hour or so after the meal.

The Test--Some time after the family have left the table, not less than an hour and preferably longer, ask each child separately, and not in the hearing of the others, how the breakfast table looked that morning. Let the child tell in detail what he can of the appearance of the table, or if old enough let each write a description. The ease with which this is done, the amount of definiteness displayed, and the vividness with which the child reproduces the table will be an accurate indication of the quality of images used in his imagination.

A Universally Useful Faculty

Some have held the notion that imagination is a faculty useful only to actors, artists or poets. This is untrue. Some parents have discouraged and even killed the imaginative faculty in their children, because they did not wish them to follow either of the above professions.

Your child will be the greatest credit and satisfaction to you if he becomes that for which his natural endowment and inclination is strongest. It is a great mistake for parents to drive a child to grow up according to some previously conceived plan or professional choice of their own. Parental wisdom and duty are to find out what the child is especially endowed for and to guide him in taking advantage of these natural gifts, and at the same time inducing a general development in other lines.

Because of past misunderstanding or lack of understanding of its importance in every line of effort, including science, engineering, and every business development, many parents have discouraged their children in the use of their imagination. Every leader in commercial and industrial life is a man who has learned to use this faculty. Without it he could not make great progress. Other men as brilliant as he have lagged behind because they have never cultivated their imagination or allowed themselves to be led by it. You should do everything possible to encourage and to guide your children in the conscious use of this faculty.

Children's Falsehoods

Many parents are distressed because of the tendency on the part of young children to tell untruths, "stories" about what they have seen or heard. This tendency is more marked in some children and occurs in the younger years before the senses and faculties are thoroughly under control. There is nothing dangerous about this, it is more often than not the result of a vivid imagination in which the visualizations appear real. The fusion of ideas and illusions sometimes cause the story to be "so awful."

In most cases the child will outgrow this tendency and if carefully and wisely watched over nothing detrimental will come of it. It is an indication of a strong imaginative faculty which, if guided and trained, will later be of immense value to him. Children who have a tendency to this "story telling" should not be punished for it. They should be given to understand that these are imaginary stories and should not be told as the truth. They will, of course, appear real to the child, but he will gradually learn to distinguish between the real and the imaginary.

Two children, both with vivid imaginations, were allowed and encouraged in telling all kinds of imaginary stories, and playing imaginary games, but were taught to discriminate between these and the truth by the use of the word "really." If one began to wonder if the things the other was telling were true and actually happened, he would ask, "Was it really, sister?" "Oh, no, not really," was the reply, and the game or story proceeded. In this way the children developed the faculty and were taught to respect the truth.

Reality of Illusions

There may be many individual peculiarities about your child's imagination and his "story telling inclination," but these should not induce you to be severe or to forbid them unless you have studied the subject of the imagination carefully, or secured competent advice.

You attend the entertainment of a magician, and during the whole evening your senses are deceived. The magician uses the inclination of the mind to illusions in making his tricks possible. He throws a ball into the air a couple of feet and catches it. Then he throws it higher and does the same several times, the last time he goes through the same motion without the ball and nine-tenths of the audience will swear that they saw it actually disappear in the air. If we with years of experience in sensation and thought are so easily deceived can you justly punish a child for yielding to the same mental tendencies?

Imagination a Curse or Blessing

All normal children possess the faculty and its use will bring them blessing and success if properly guided. The direct opposite is true. If the child is allowed to form the habit of using his imagination carelessly and negatively it will be harmful to an extreme degree.

Positive imagination which suggests happy, cheerful and successful thoughts and actions should be praised and encouraged.

Negative imagination which suggests danger, accident, sickness, loss and failure, should be discouraged and immediately replaced by thoughts which are positive in quality. Imagination allowed to dwell upon morbid, revengeful, ethically forbidden, or immoral ideas is harmful physically as well as morally. "He who has imagined an action 'has committed it in his heart.'"

=There is no greater truth than--"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he."=

Imagination is the fountain head of thought and therefore the source of words, action, personality and character. Help your child to control the whole trend of his life by carefully governing the operations of his imagination.

Dissipating the Imagination

Here is a danger point, "Day dreaming, idle flights of imagination, building air castles are of little value, and dangerous in that they tend to develop the habit." If indulged in to excess they constitute a foolish waste of time. Occasional flights of this kind should not be dealt with harshly, but any tendency to persist in them should be stopped.

Reading of books which are wild flights of imagination often constitute a harmless form of recreation for persons who are confined for long hours at routine work, or engaged in hard physical labor. Children do not need this extreme class of reading and should not be allowed to indulge in much of it.

Exercises for the Imagination

First strive for clearness in the reproduction and ability to keep the images separate. The reproduction of letters and figures in the exercises for visualization on page 46 will accomplish this result.

Problems in mental arithmetic, if visualized, are of great value in that the correct solving of them requires vivid and separate images. Work for fullness of detail, the picture frame suggested on page 74 offers an excellent opportunity to do this while exercising the constructive imagination. While fixing the attention upon the square you keep the element of change going by use of the imagination in picture making. Put into this picture all the detail possible, add everything you can think of and then strive to create still more.

The Story Games

Read the child a story or description of some well-known object, then have him tell it as nearly as he can reproduce it. Now have him tell it again and add every bit of detail, every new circumstance and condition which he can create for himself.

Read half of a story to the child and have him go on from where you leave off, making his own imaginary ending for it. Then read the conclusion to show him how the author's imagination differed from his.

Most of the exercises and games given for the development of Visualization and Attention call the imagination into action. These three faculties are so closely related that they can not be treated entirely separate. Any exercise previously given for the first two will develop the imagination as well.

These faculties of Visualization, Attention and Imagination combine in the operation of the great faculty of Memory, which is to be the subject of the Second Book. Exercises given there will result in further development of the imagination.

The Game of Creation

Prof. Gates is credited with being the first to use the following idea for guiding the constructive imagination in producing new ideas. He has in the past few years used it so effectively that there are more than one hundred articles now manufactured under the protection of patents by the United States Government, and scores of others are being perfected.

Make a list of all the things in the room, then select one object and combine it with the rest of the list and see how many new ideas will result. This is using the constructive imagination, creating a new whole from familiar parts. Example--

Floor, table, ceiling, wall, window, glass, casing, frame, stove, pipe, damper, oilcloth, cover, rug, boards, paint, plaster, paper, picture, frame, bench, chair, couch, morris chair, curtain, rod, lace, book, paper, magazine, Victrola, plant, flag, etc.

Select table, and by combining it with the other objects we will see how some new combinations have been created, and perhaps we will create some ourselves.

Table--wall, suggests a table disappearing into the wall, as used in small apartments.

Table--oilcloth, a common article.

Table--cover, also common.

Table--rug, Oriental rugs are often used for table covers.

Table--boards, the extension dining table.

Table--chair, the combination used in dairy lunches.

Table--book, the library table.

Table--Victrola, a combination manufactured by the Columbia Company.

Table--flag, suggests the flag as a table cover.

The longer the list the greater the possibility of finding some new and useful idea. Business men use this idea constructively. Woolworth combined the 5c and store, and made his fortune. Ingersol combined the Dollar and Watch. A boat, paddles, and a steam engine resulted in the first steamboat.

There is no limit to the illustration, it is everywhere apparent and in many things that you use. Every new invention or short-cut in business will result from a new combination of existing concepts. We are now manufacturing alcohol from sawdust, rubber from wheat. When shall we stop?

Play this game with the children. They will enjoy it and learn how progress has been made and gain new and valuable ideas. An active lad was confined to the house with a broken leg. His mother started him playing this game and by its use he has discovered many new games. This time it suggested kite--window, and soon, with the assistance of a neighbor boy, he was flying his kite out of a window.

The Picture Gallery

In the great home of the mind there is a room of unusual importance which can be known as the picture gallery. Here the great artist Imagination hangs the products of his efforts. Picture after picture is painted by this wonderful faculty and hung in this gallery. Each of these pictures becomes a force exerted upon the individual in whose mind it is hung. Thought and Desire wander in this gallery incessantly, and gaze upon the pictures there, using them as patterns for their efforts in future. From these pictures they get their incentive and inspiration.

The young child's picture gallery is a wonderful room with clean, white walls waiting for the artist to take up the task of painting and hanging the pictures. This artist is young and inexperienced and easily influenced and guided by one older and more accurate.

The parents should realize that this gallery is going to be rapidly filled with pictures, and that the choice of these pictures can be almost entirely under their control. You can help your child's imagination paint clean, wholesome pictures that will result in helpful and constructive influence upon his life. But remember that these pictures ARE BEING HUNG, whether YOU take time to help in the work or not.