Distractions are all too disastrous these days for kids with the availability of mobile phones, tablets, social media, high speed internet, and on-demand television. Whenever your child becomes distracted, there is an additional period of time required before they are able to refocus on the task at hand.
Here are some handy tips for keeping your child focused on the tasks at hand, and especially during homework time.
1) Reduce or Eliminate Sources of Noise
In a noisy environments, even adults will have increased difficulty in maintaining concentration. For younger children, this is especially impactful due to their shorter attention spans. Try to make available a quiet location for your child to study and do homework, this will allow for much greater focus and decrease frustration from learning difficulties.
2) Create an organized and clean environment
Aside from a quiet environment, how clean and organized an environment will also have a large impact on a person’s ability to focus. Just as noises can interrupt the thinking process of your child, visual clutter can also be the visual noise which distracts them.
Ideally, a clean empty table, in a tidy room is available for your child to study in. If that is not possible, simply by organizing the items in the room as best as you can will help to decrease the amount of distraction that the environment causes for your child.
3) Set Reasonable Focus Targets
While it would be ideal for a child to be able to concentrate on a task for an infinite amount of time, it is simply not feasible to do so. Start off with shorter concentration goals of 5 minutes and then allow for breaks after each period of concentration. If the goal is set to too long a period of time, your child may feel frustrated and become unproductive after a period of time has elapsed.
4) Train to extend the duration of the attention span
The good news is that this concentration duration is extendable over time, with the proper training. By progressively increasing this high quality concentration period, it is possible to train this like a muscle and eventually develop the ability to concentrate for long periods of time.
5) Take Breaks that are not too distracting
As mentioned above, taking breaks after each period of heavy concentration is important to refresh the concentration energy of your child. While such breaks are suggested, it is important to keep in mind not to perform activities which would completely destroy the mood of the studying. Avoid break activities which would cause your child’s attention to remain on the break activities even after the break time is over. Instead, try something milder such as listening to music and other less distracting play activities.
6) Train with thinking and memory games
Aside from training concentration during homework time, there are also other activities to train the brain to efficiently concentrate and recall information. For example, there are games that require thinking and the usage of memory. These activities will help train your child to exert effort in concentration and thinking, making concentrating on homework much easier.
7) Sit together with your child
When you sit with your child to do their homework or studies, this provides a comfort to help them concentrate better. It is a very effective technique and this also helps to build a stronger relationship between you and your child. Any frustrations encountered by your child can also be immediately brought to your attention and resolved with your presence there.
At Success Tutorial School, our professional staff ensure the perfect environment for your child to concentrate and learn.
8) Identify What helps
There will be times when your child achieve higher and lower concentration. Carefully observe the times when this happens, and figure out what elements are causing a positive or negative influence to their concentration. This influence may be something or someone in the room, the time of day, the audio in the room, the brightness of the room, or even the temperature.
9) Maintain a schedule
By forming a regular schedule for homework and other tasks, this helps to train your child’s brain to change to the necessary level of concentration when it is time to do so. This also helps to build discipline for your child in school and in life, which operates on such set schedules.
10) Figure out the best schedule
Some children have more energy during the day, and some have more energy during the night. It is important to identify which is the case for your child, and handle the most challenging tasks during the high energy period. This will greatly increase the success of the task and lower the amount of frustration felt by your child.
11) Helpful naps and a good night’s rest
Sleep and rest is very critical to the success of having a good concentration. Make sure your child does not stay up too late, so that they can get a good night’s rest. Without being properly rested, the ability to concentrate during the day will be greatly diminished no matter how hard they try to.
12) Avoid Phones, Tablets and Computers
As mentioned in the beginning, phones, tablets, computers, and other gadgets are terrible for a person’s ability to concentrate. They cause constant distraction and greatly lower the attention span duration of a person’s norm. In addition to lowering attention span, the usage of LED lights a few hours before bed will lower the quality of sleep since it tricks your brain into thinking that it is day time.
13) Healthy Eating
One of the most overlooked area for a child’s path to better learning is healthy eating. Soda and energy drinks are loaded with caffeine and sugar, causing an energy crash after a spike in energy. This energy crash will waste hours of time daily for kids, so it would be a good idea to avoid sugary drinks and caffeine.
It is also a good idea to eat more vegetables and fruits to acquire the proper nutrients for a healthy body. One important fact to note, is that fruits do contain sugar as well, so a balanced amount of fruit intake is advised. Avoiding processed foods will allow the body to stay healthy and achieve better concentration as well.
Of course, the most common and popular food item to increase brain performance is fatty fish. Particularly fish such as Salmon, Trout and Sardines which are rich sources of Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is used to build brain and nerve cells, and are critical for learning and memory formation.
There are many ways to improve concentration for your child, all very helpful in their own ways. However, it is very important to consciously train your child to concentrate better through hard work and diligence.
At Success Tutorial School, we have qualified and friendly tutors for math, French, English, and science to help your child perform better academically. Come and see how we can help your child succeed and create a successful future for themselves.
