WHEN YOUR CHILD IMAGINES THINGS


Johnny was playing in the room while his mother was sewing at the
window. Johnny looked out of the window and exclaimed, "Oh, mother,
see that great big lion!"

His mother looked, but saw only a medium-sized dog.

"Why, Johnny," replied the mother, "how can you say such a thing?
You know very well that was only a dog. Now go right in the corner
and pray to God to forgive you for telling such a lie!"

Johnny went. When he came back, he said triumphantly, "See, mother,
God said He thought it was a lion Himself."

This poor mother is a typical example of a large class of mothers
who fail to understand their children because they have no idea of
what goes on in the child's mind. To Johnny the lion was just as
_real_ as the dog was to the mother. And even if the dog had
not been there for the mother to see, Johnny could have seen just as
real a lion.

Every mother ought to know that practically every healthy child has
imagination. You will have to take a long day's journey to find a
child that has no imagination to begin with--and then you will find
that this child is wonderfully uninteresting, or actually stupid.

You can easily observe for yourself that as soon as a child knows a