A young child's attention is fleeting, jumping from what he is doing to the stimuli around him. Because young children are so curious about the world, they have a limited ability to tune out the stimuli around them. This means that young children are very easily distracted. Constant attention span is the foundation for learning, developing life skills, and preparing a child for group learning environments. Therefore, it is important to improve care in children from a young age.
Young children often need adult help to stay focused on a task until it is completed. As a child's attention span begins to improve, they will be able to play independently without the need for you to constantly monitor them. It is important to remember that the ability to increase attention skill is like a muscle: You must exercise to strengthen it. You can help improve this attention span by working with him or her one-on-one. The activities that you carry out with your son or daughter must be motivating and have the possibility of being able to expand them.
Activities to improve attention in children
- kitchen chores. Young children are often motivated by participating in "grown-up" tasks, so the kitchen may be more appropriate. Spreading cocoa cream on pieces of bread or squeezing fruit to make a healthy juice can be good starts. Any simple thing you can think of can help them start to focus on activities that are of interest to them. In addition, eating or drinking something prepared by himself will fill him with pride.
- extend reading time. Slowly extend the amount of time you spend on the reading it can also improve your attention span. You can make comments while you are reading to him, and ask him things about the story, spontaneously. You can also ask your child to point to objects or characters that are drawn on the page you are reading, and create parallel stories with those objects or characters.
- stay seated. Encourage your son or daughter to do motor activities such as coloring, puzzles, construction games or plasticine figures. These types of activities will keep you focused, as well as improve your motor skills.
Choose age-appropriate activities
Observing your son or daughter while they play to know what things they entertain themselves with can be very helpful. Young children are usually entertained with anything, a toy car, a clothes peg, his favorite cap… You can join his game with another element or ask him what he does. If you see that he loses interest, you can think about giving his original game a twist so that he gets hooked on it again.
If you propose a different task, you must make sure that he can do it by himself or herself, or with a little help from you. By presenting him with an age-appropriate challenge that he can do individually, you will prevent him from getting frustrated or discouraged.. While frustration or discouragement are important emotions to experience and work with, they can get in the way of progress when trying to improve a young child's care.
Motivation to improve child care
What improves the attention span muscle depends on the ability to increase the time of completion in an activity. So once your son or daughter tells you that he's done with his homework, encourage him to do it just one more time. As parents gently encourage their children to continue with a task, the children will feel encouraged to continue. If you join him or her in this repetition, you can help improve his or her performance further. capacity of attention. For example, if she was painting in a notebook and she finishes, you can say, “Great! We are going to paint some more and then we collect all the paintings.”
It is important for his motivation that you celebrate every little win he achieves, such as encouraging him to continue a little longer before switching to something else. With a little daily practice you will notice that your son or daughter is gradually increasing their attention span. She will be doing more activities for longer periods of time, and this will come in handy when she is older.