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How to Teach Your Child to Concentrate

Once you have a basic understanding of your child's patterns of concentration, you can usefully start talking to him about it. In order to explain to your child what concentration is, first help him to recognize concentration in others:

• "Look at Daddy reading the paper. He looks like he is concentrating really hard! Did you see just now I asked him if he wants a coffee, and he just went "hmmm" - he can hardly hear me, because he is concentrating so hard!"
• "See the cat on the lawn, what's he looking at? Do you think he's after mice? See how he is concentrating all of his attention on the grass under the bush? Cats are very good hunters, because they can concentrate so well."
• "Look at your baby sister eating her dinner. She is still learning to use her spoon; she is concentrating very hard on getting her food in her mouth! We learn well when we are concentrating."

Next, help your child to recognize concentration in himself. Wait for a time when he is concentrating very hard on something, preferably an activity rather than something passive like watching TV. Watch him carefully, but don't talk to him until he completes the activity and his concentration naturally breaks - you will recognize this because you will see him suddenly become aware of his surroundings as his period of concentration comes to an end. Now try comments and questions like these:

• "Wow, it looked like you were concentrating really hard while you were drawing that picture!"
• "How did it feel to concentrate like that?"
• "How long do you think you were concentrating on your picture for? Sometimes when we concentrate it feels like a short time, a few minutes, but really it is a lot longer because we are enjoying what we are doing so much."
• "It's really useful to be able to concentrate hard whenever we want to. Like for instance when you are doing your homework, if you know how to concentrate really hard, you can usually do it really well, and still get it finished in a lot less time."
• "I noticed that your little sister interrupted you when you were concentrating on your picture. How did it feel when she interrupted your concentration? I saw that you spoke to her and gave her a crayon, but then you quickly went back to concentrating again. That's very good. It's really useful to be able to get back into your concentration when someone interrupts you."
• "You are really good at concentrating. Would you like to play a game to help you learn how you can concentrate even better?"

Don't use all of the above approaches at once - do it over a period of a few days, using different examples of concentration.

You will probably find that your child shows a lot of interest in this kind of conversation. After all, much of the time a child's conversations with his parents are very trivial, telling him or asking him to do things, reminding him to tidy his room and so on. He loves it when you talk to him like an adult about things that really matter!

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