My child is prone to absent-minded; what should I do?
After the child goes to school, I find that my child does his homework slowly. He always wanders around to have a look, playing with pencils and rulers. He is only in the first grade, but he has to procrastinate on his homework until 10:00 in the evening.
The teacher also said, "your child has to woolgather several times in my class 40 minutes."
What am I supposed to do?
Answers ( 1 )
Your question is actually universal.
"Children's lack of concentration and slow homework" is a problem not only for the parents of many junior students, but also for the parents of many senior students.
As long as a child is asked to start a task, whether it's reading or writing, he suddenly seems to have a lot of other things (sometimes he needs to go to the bathroom, sometimes he has to drink a few mouthfuls of water, and sometimes he starts looking for something in his bag.)
When faced with such a situation, parents often feel particularly anxious and think that "this is a problem of their children's attitude."
But have you ever thought that this might be "a problem of children's ability and habit formation".
Next, I'm going to show you a "reading step" where you can concentrate while reading.
You see, in fact, the length of concentration is highly related to his age.
For example, it would be nice for a first-grader to be able to concentrate on reading for 20 minutes (that doesn't mean he's not distracted at all. In fact, each attention unit, the length of time he is not distracted at all, is usually three to five minutes in the first grade. )
So after three to five minutes, he can actually get "a minute to relax a little bit" (he can go for a drink of water, go to the bathroom and come back).
That "he can read attentively for 20 minutes" is qualified at the first-grade level.
Then you must also want to ask, "if concentration is a question of habit, how can this ability be improved?"
Or does he normally rise naturally with age?
Can habits be cultivated?
Of course, this ability can be trained, and habits can also be formed, and the sooner you develop it, the better. The more you leave later, the more trouble parents have to face.
But first, you need to understand that there are steps in forming habits:
First, you need to know your children.
Second, you have to accept his status quo.
Third, give him appropriate challenges and support.
Many of our parents often take the first two steps (they don't remember to know and accept their children first), but go straight to the third step and give him a comment: "you see, why can the kids next door do it but you can't?
If you put this goal into your child, it may be counterproductive for your children.
The cultivation of attention also needs to follow this step, so how to do it?
I'll give you ten specific ways to improve your attention.
First, a quiet and open environment;
second, clean desktops;
third, task books and results folders;
fourth, bookmarks;
fifth, appropriate parental participation, such as parent-child reading;
sixth, assign relatively high-level tasks to children;
seventh, a soft rubber ball;
eight, reading aloud pretending to be fun;
nine, appropriate outdoor activities;
ten, rest.
Well, when you see these ten, I want to ask you a question, "how many of them do you remember?"
Are you basically only impressed by rubber balls or results clips?
In fact, for the students in the first grade of primary school, you have to ask him," what did I just say?
Their feedback will be similar to yours and can only remember what they are interested in, even though they have tried hard to listen to you carefully.
So how can they be more efficient while listening?
There is an excellent way to classify these ten items for you into three categories, namely, preparation system, reward system and help system.
I. preparation system
First of all, let's talk about the preparation system, that is, to prepare the environment for your child's attention improvement. It includes four items, which I will explain one by one.
When you understand why this can help your child improve his or her attention, it will be much easier for you to remember.
By the way, understanding itself is also a great way to improve efficiency and attention!
First, the big environment: an open and quiet environment.
Open so that you can observe your child, quiet means try not to disturb him.
Please note that it does not mean complete silence, your whole family has to tiptoe, do housework normally, but avoid watching TV (which is too easy to disturb his study).
For example, the dining table at home is more accessible to cultivate his attention than a separate desk in a child's room.
Second, the small environment -- a clean desktop.
Put everything he need for one task on his desk at a time.
No water cup, no snacks, no stationery he doesn't need!
When a child sees these desktop furnishings, he can remind him of "there are all the tasks you should accomplish now."
It is effective to help him focus on one thing at an early stage.
Third, a task book and a results folder.
The task book is used to record "all the tasks he needs to complete today". When one item is completed, hit a check, while the results folder is used to put all his completed tasks and homework, so that he will not forget to bring his homework the next day.
Watching each task on the task list be ticked, and there are more and more things in the results folder -- it is an excellent positive feedback for the child.
Fourth, bookmarks.
Bookmark is a "stop prop".
As mentioned earlier, a first-grade child can "keep his mind wandering for three or five minutes" at most. What you need to do is to make him realize that "I am distracted" when he is distracted.
Then you have to tell your child that if you find yourself distracted, put the bookmark on "his unfinished task." For example, if your child wants to go to the bathroom or drink water, you can put a bookmark and when he comes back to restart the task, take the bookmark away and start his task again here.
(Of course, the use of bookmarks is limited. For example, I suggest that bookmarks for first-year students should not be used more than twice in a 20-minute task unit. )
II. Help system
Okay, let's talk about the second system, the help system.
The help system consists of two parts, namely, "the part where the parent can help him" and "the part where the child can help himself".
What can parents do to help their children?
First, sometimes, parents' proper participation (such as parent-child reading) can increase the child's attention.
The essence of parent-child reading is to pull the child from his attention unit to the "adult attention unit".
It is not difficult for an adult to think about nothing but focus on only one thing in ten minutes.
So when you have a parent-child interaction, you have to turn your child's five-minute attention unit into your ten-minute attention unit.
Besides, "often discuss the content of the book with your child, for the child to improve attention" is also useful feedback.
Second, parents can assign relatively high-level tasks to their children.
What is a high-level task?
I have two tasks here. You can compare them.
Task 1, "Please recite these three poems. I will come back in the evening to check yours."
Task 2, "Mom is going to explain three poems to her colleagues tomorrow, and now I'm a little hesitant. You see, here are five poems. I don't know which three will be better. Can you help me choose them from your point of view? I go to work today. I don't have time to choose. When I get off work, can you help me choose three poems? "
Task 2 is actually more difficult than task 1, because comprehension is more difficult than recitation.
Accordingly, however, it also puts forward a requirement for parents: "it is easy to check whether their children can recite poems or not."
However, "parents tell their children poems" and "parents and children discuss which poem is better and where is better", which requires parents' efforts.
Therefore, "assigning high-level tasks" will certainly make children feel more interested and have a greater sense of achievement, but also put forward higher requirements for their parents!
How do children help themselves?
Third, a soft rubber ball.
This is actually a method of a psychological cue. When the child feels distracted and a little upset, ask him to give himself a psychological switch -- He pinched the rubber ball and completed the decompression.
Most importantly, he completed a psychological hint that "I can concentrate."
When he gave this hint, he actually took his attention back.
Fourth, read aloud pretending to be interesting.
In fact, this is also a method of psychological suggestion.
Our memory is actually mixed with a lot of "environmental information that we rarely pay attention to." For example, I memorized this poem in this environment. Next time in the same environment, I will easily remember this poem.
As long as we can mobilize more brain regions to think about the same thing, our memories will become clearer and our attention will be more focused.
Then how can children use this method?
Is to ask him to read aloud, pretending it to be interesting, which is equivalent to "he is making interesting marks for the text."
This is much more effective than giving him a colored pen and telling him to mark all the good words and sentences.
Reward system
The reward system includes two items, proper outdoor activities and rest, which will be easy to understand.
We just emphasize the rest arrangement. For first-grade children, a task unit should not exceed 20 minutes as much as possible.
After twenty minutes, you should ask him to arrange a rest time, five to ten minutes, depending on his habits.
PS:
Use more ways to improve attention.
For example, opening the five senses is actually a way to improve attention.
You may find it strange that when I read the text, I also use the sense of smell and taste. Isn't my mind distracted?
On the contrary, using multiple sensory areas to pay attention to the same thing's feelings is helpful for children's learning efficiency!