How Do I Get My Child To Pay Attention?
A parent recently wrote to me with a question that, in my experience, many others share. She said,
My child is about to turn five and I am starting her on your program. We're working on the Sequences in Sight and Handwriting sections. I'm finding it hard to get my daughter to pay attention. When she pays attention she learns
easily. However, after three or four steps in a lesson, her mind wanders and it is a struggle to get her to look at the page, even if she is doing the steps correctly.
I don't want to reward her behavior by ending the lesson early, but I don't want to perpetuate a negative feedback loop that starts to happen when her attention lapses. What should I do?
The parent has spotted a key issue that needs to be addressed from a couple of angles.
First, be sure not to take one or two sessions as definitive. Make sure that the sessions are offered at a good time of day when the child is not tired and also make sure that she is not hungry. The setting should be quiet and television and other equipment should not be on anywhere near where the teaching is taking place. If those factors are fine and the child is still inattentive, we move on to the next step which deals with the broader issue as to whether the child is ready for the program.
As discussed in the section on the Phonics Plus Five website under the heading Is the Program Right For Your Child, for the program to be effective, a child must be able to regularly sit and carry out school like activities with an adult for 15 minutes at a time.
Based on what the mother has said, it is likely that her child does not yet have this ability. So it seems best to delay starting the program for a while. That, however, does not mean that a parent should simply sit back and wait for the behavior to emerge. In an age where attention problems are all too common, waiting may actually serve to reinforce the child's inattention since, over time, she keeps getting more and more practice at withdrawing from a variety of activities.
Instead, it would be ideal for the mom to set in place a regular type of encounter that will help the child develop better attention. That attention is required not only for Phonics Plus Five, but for all school success. One way to do this is to have, four to five times a week, a "play" like activity with the child. Each play session should last about 10 -15 minutes and then gradually be extended as the child's attentional skills develop.
The content of the activity in the session is critical. It can be almost anything that is age appropriate, but at the same time, it should be one that the child does NOT particularly like. Possibilities might be puzzles, filling in colors on a sheet, a board game.
This suggestion to use an activity that the child does not like is probably surprising since it is likely to go against many things you've heard about encouraging learning. But the fact of the matter is that children with attentional problems have no problem staying on task with things they like. Their problem comes when they have to stay on task with something they do not particularly like. School, no matter how friendly, pleasant and supportive it might be, will steadily require the child to do just that--to deal with less than desirable activities. By setting up the appropriate patterns at home, the child is given a real leg up in handling a very important area of behavior.
The atmosphere of the sessions should be relaxed but, throughout, the adult should be leading. The adult should also be making the child wait for defined intervals. In a board game, for example, the parent might say, "Oh, this is hard, I need to think--let me see, I could go here but that would be a problem because...Oh I see, I think...I will go here."
The adult can also set things up so that the child is not able to act instantly (e.g., The adult might say, "Now it's your turn. But wait, you don't have your cards in order. See mine.. See, they are straight and yours aren't. You need to fix them so that.." After this intervening set of actions is completed, the child can then move.
In other words, the idea is to steadily introduce short periods of delay where child has to inhibit--over and over again
The interaction should last about 1- 2 minutes beyond what seems to be the child's limit. That means the activity may not be completed in a single session. And that is fine. It can be put aside and completed another time. But the child is kept attending for longer than she wants.
It's useful to think of attention as a muscle that has to be exercised. Steadily go just beyond the comfortable limit--with the ultimate goal being 20 minutes of sustained interaction. If a 5 year old can do that, she is well on her way to school success.
