Have you heard this phrase often, or have you said it too often? "My kid is very smart, he just doesn't pay attention, and if he listens well, he will learn it right away."
In the face of the shiny modifier "smart", "inattention", that is, poor concentration, seems to be just a trivial problem that can be overcome as soon as the child wants to. But is this really the case?
01
Is concentration something you can have if you want to?
There are two perspectives on concentration:
One view is that concentration is a property of the nervous system, either yes or no. This view is not recognized by the public, because to recognize this view is to admit that human beings are powerless to "concentrate".
There is also the view that concentration is a dynamic process of gradual development. It involves the interaction of a variety of nervous systems, including receiving information such as various scenes, sounds, and touches; processing this information; planning and performing actions.
For a simple example, you tell your child to go upstairs and take the books out of your bag. The child went upstairs but did not take the book down because he had a hindrance in processing the information.
Your instructions first test your child's ability to process sounds. He hears you and interprets your instructions. But in the process of reading, he only remembered to go upstairs, skipping "take the book down."
Of course, there is also a possibility that he remembered to take the book when he went upstairs, and when he got upstairs, he was attracted to something else, and he forgot his task. It's a bit like a child, muttering about the soy sauce in his mouth, and when he falls, the soy sauce turns into vinegar.
From these two points of view, the second view is more in line with the development of human cognition, and concentration is a dynamic process that is gradually formed.
Montessori once said that the best way to learn for children is to let them concentrate on learning. How to judge whether a child's concentration is good or not?
02
4 aspects of measuring your child's concentration
It is not that the child only does one thing for a long time is good concentration, such as the child draws 5 minutes to leave the seat, 3 minutes to change a toy, this kind of behavior is not quiet does not represent the child lack of concentration.
To measure the quality or failure of a child's concentration, it is necessary to look at the child's performance in these 4 aspects:
Stability of concentration
Stability is the ability of a person to be relatively stable over a certain period of time and focus on a particular object and activity. The counterpart to stability is distraction.
For example, children write homework, one moment to cut nails, one moment to touch the hair, the other to scratch the itch or something, that is, the stability is relatively poor.
Breadth of focus
Breadth is the number of objects that a person can clearly perceive or recognize in a split second. When you hear a passage, some people can repeat a few words, and some people can only remember a limited number of words, which is the difference in the breadth of concentration.
The distributive nature of focus
Distributiveness refers to a person's ability to distribute their attention equally among multiple activities.
For example, in class, the teacher writes a board book while lecturing. Some students can keep up, some students will have no way to take notes after listening to lectures, and they can't listen to lectures when taking notes, which is the manifestation of insufficient concentration distribution.
The transferability of concentration
Transferivity refers to a person's ability to actively and purposefully focus on the ability to quickly switch, shift, and focus from one object to another object in a timely manner.
Transferivity is the flexibility of concentration, for example, there is a question that will not be done during the exam, the attention has been on this question, and the other questions are not in the state, which is the transferability of concentration is relatively poor.
It is normal for children to have such and such problems in terms of concentration, and these problems can be solved through systematic training.
03
Everyday games to improve concentration
Many times the child's concentration is interrupted by us, such as the child is concentrating on playing with toys, and there will be various calls of concern in the ears: drink water or not, hot or not hot, eat or not eat fruit...
When it comes to protecting your child's concentration, we have to uphold Montessori's saying that you should never disturb your child unless you are invited by your child.
In "Not Impatient: Using Games to Enhance Children's Learning Ability", Wei Hua, an expert in children's learning, gives small games that can be carried out in daily life for every aspect of concentration, and solves the problem of children's concentration in a targeted manner.
Game 1: Poker card game to improve the stability of children's concentration
We can improve the stability of our child's concentration by taking them to play games that require "full concentration.". For example, with the poker cards that every family has, you can play a game of "one minute of high concentration".
Take three different playing cards, arrange them on the table, and let the child choose one;
Then the three cards are held upside down on the table, and the parents change the position of the three cards several times at will;
Finally have the child find the card he has chosen.
In this game, the child can only win if he devotes himself wholeheartedly and keeps a close eye on the card he has chosen. Using the child's competitive spirit and using simple props at home, you can achieve the purpose of cultivating children's concentration and exercising rapid response ability.
Game 2: Repeat the machine game to improve the breadth of your child's concentration
Sometimes children like to repeat the words of their parents, and we can play the "repeating machine" game with the child, so that the child can improve the breadth of concentration and memory in the game.
According to the child's age characteristics, choose content suitable for repetition, such as 3-digit numbers, 4-digit numbers, telephone numbers, idioms, ancient poems, sentences, and also let the child say the opposite.
In order to avoid the game becoming monotonous, we can choose different content to make the child feel fresh and interesting, and to improve the learning ability in the fun game.
Game 3:123 password performs multi-threaded tasks to improve the distribution of concentration
In order to solve the situation that children can only complete single-line tasks regardless of their heads and feet, we can play the "123 password" game with children, let children perform multi-threaded tasks, and improve the problem of insufficient distribution.
Parents shout passwords and make movements together;
When shouting 1 and 2 on the first time, ask for two high-fives, and the first time you shout 3, pinch your nose with your left hand and grasp your right ear with your right hand;
When shouting 1 and 2 for the second time, the same high-fives are twice, but the second time you shout 3, pinch your nose with your right hand and grasp your left ear with your left hand.
Failure to do anything within three seconds after the order is issued or if the action is wrong is considered a failure.
This is the game method given in the book "No Rush", and we can derive a lot of other ways to play on this basis. For example, touching the nose when shouting 1, clapping your hands when shouting 2, and jumping when shouting 3 will promote the coordination of children's hearing and movements and enhance children's concentration.
Game 4: Grid battles to increase the transfer speed of your child's concentration
I wonder if you've ever heard of a Schult square? The Schult square can be used to test the transferability of children's concentration, but also to improve the level of concentration, and it also has a place in the training of pilot astronauts.
At home we can also practice the Schult square for our children. Draw squares on a square card, and depending on the size of your child's age, you can draw 4× 4, 5×5 or even more squares.
Take the squares of 4×4 as an example, fill in the Arabic numerals 1-16 in the square grid, and then use your fingers to point out the position of each number in the order of 1 to 16, and read out the numbers at the same time, which takes a short time to win.
If you don't want to draw your own Schubert squares, you can search on the Internet, and there are many ready-made direct prints. However, I think it is better to print only the grid, the number is filled in by the parent and the child together, a little to the meaning of each other's questions, the fun will be greater, the child is more willing to participate.
Teacher Wei Hua wrote in "Not Impatient", the child is a mirror, and the problems in the child also reflect the missing or insufficient places in family education. Children are not concentrating, parents may wish to find the reason from themselves, which will help to completely solve the child's problem.
For example, does it provide a quiet learning environment for children, whether the pace of family life is too fast for children to adapt, whether children have emotional pressure and unpleasant experiences in the learning process? These negative effects can affect your child's concentration.
If I had to choose between being "smart" and having "concentration," I would choose to focus. The same thing, maybe smart people learn in 5 minutes, ordinary people take half an hour. But if the smart guy doesn't even have those 5 minutes of concentration, he'll still get nowhere.
From this point of view, smart may have the ingredient of the queen's wife selling melons to sell herself, but concentration is the starting line of children.