“First, as to her lessons: you must help her to gain the power of attention; that should have been done long ago, but better late than never, and an aunt who has given her mind to these matters takes blame to herself for not having seen the want sooner. ‘But,’ I fancy you are saying, ‘if the child has no faculty of attention, how can we give it to her? It’s just a natural defect.’ Not a bit of it! Attention is not a faculty at all, though I believe it is worth more than all the so-called faculties put together; this, at any rate, is true, that no talent, no genius, is worth much without the power of attention; and this is the power which makes men or women successful in life.
“Attention is no more than this—the power of giving your mind to what you are about—the bigger the better so far as the mind goes, and great minds do great things; but have you never known a person with a great mind, ‘real genius,’ his friends say, who goes through life without accomplishing anything? It is just because he wants the power to ‘turn on,’ so to speak, the whole of his great mind; he is unable to bring the whole of his power to bear on the subject in hand. ‘But Kitty?’ Yes, Kitty must get this power of ‘turning on.’ She must be taught to give her mind to sums and reading, and even to dusters. Go slowly; a little to-day and a little more to-morrow. In the first place, her lessons must be made interesting. Do not let her scramble through a page of ‘reading,’ for instance, spelling every third word and then waiting to be told what it spells, but see that every day she learns a certain number of new words—six, twelve, twenty, as she is able to hear them; not ‘spellings’—terrible invention!—but words that occur in a few lines of some book of stories or rhymes; and these she should know, not by spelling, but by sight. It does not matter whether the new words be long or short, in one syllable or in four, but let them be interesting words. For instance, suppose her task for to-day be ‘Little Jack Horner,’ she should learn to know, by sight, thumb, plum, Christmas, corner, &c., before she begins to read the rhyme; make ‘plum’ with her loose letters, print it on her slate, let her find it elsewhere in her book, any device you can think of, so that ‘plum’ is brought before her eyes half-a-dozen times, and each time recognised and named. Then, when it comes in the reading lesson, it is an old friend, read off with delight. Let every day bring the complete mastery of a few new words, as well as the keeping up of the old ones. At the rate of only six a day she will learn, say, fifteen hundred in a year; in other words, she will have learned to read! And if it do not prove to be reading without tears and reading with attention, I shall not presume to make another suggestion about the dear little girl’s education.
“But do not let the lesson last more than ten minutes, and insist, with brisk, bright determination, on the child’s full concentrated attention of eye and mind for the whole ten minutes. Do not allow a moment’s dawdling at lessons.
“I would not give her rows of figures to add yet; use dominoes or the domino cards prepared for the purpose, the point being to add or subtract the dots on the two halves in a twinkling. You will find that the three can work together at this as at the reading, and the children will find it as exciting and delightful as ‘old soldier.’ Kitty will be all alive here, and will take her share of work merrily; and this is a point gained. Do not, if you can help it, single the little maid out from the rest and throw her on her own responsibility. ’Tis a ‘heavy and a weary weight’ for the bravest of us, and the little back will get a trick of bending under life if you do not train her to carry it lightly, as an Eastern woman her pitcher.
“Then, vary the lessons; now head, and now hands; now tripping feet and tuneful tongue; but in every lesson let Kitty and the other two carry away the joyous sense of—
‘Something attempted, something done.’
“Allow of no droning wearily over the old stale work,—which must be kept up all the time, it is true, but rather by way of an exciting game than as the lesson of the day, which should always be a distinct step that the children can recognise.
“You have no notion, until you try, how the ‘now-or-never’ feeling about a lesson quickens the attention of even the most volatile child; what you can drone through all day, you will; what must be done, is done. Then, there is a by-the-way gain besides that of quickened attention. I once heard a wise man say that, if he must choose between the two, he would rather his child should learn the meaning of ‘must’ than inherit a fortune. And here you will be able to bring moral force to bear on wayward Kitty. Every lesson must have its own time, and no other time in this world is there for it. The sense of the preciousness of time, of the irreparable loss when a ten minutes’ lesson is thrown away, must be brought home.
“Let your own unaffected distress at the loss of ‘golden minutes’ be felt by the children, and also be visited upon them by the loss of some small childish pleasure which the day should have held. It is a sad thing to let a child dawdle through a day and be let off scot-free. You see, I am talking of the children, and not of Kitty alone, because it is so much easier to be good in company; and what is good for her will be good for the trio.
“But there are other charges: poor Kitty is neither steady in play nor steadfast in love! May not the habit of attending to her lessons help her to stick to her play? Then, encourage her. ‘What! The doll’s tea-party over! That’s not the way grown-up ladies have tea; they sit and talk for a long time. See if you can make your tea-party last twenty minutes by my watch!’ This failing of Kitty’s is just a case where a little gentle ridicule might do a great deal of good. It is a weapon to be handled warily, for one child may resent, and another take pleasure in being laughed at; but managed with tact I do believe it’s good for children and grown-ups to see the comic side of their doings.