Hey, welcome back to Live On Purpose TV, glad that you're here. Today, how to get
kids to focus better.
I got some input recently from some of our listeners
about the parenting content that we're doing here at Live On Purpose TV and
with 23 years of experience as a psychologist, I've worked a lot with
parents and a lot with kids and many of the questions have to do with how do I
get my kid to to focus better or to pay better attention and there's some
problems with ADHD for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, that we'll
address in some other videos. I'm not talking about that specifically today
because a lot of the questions that come through have to do with situations that
are pretty typical for childhood. In fact, the more accurate diagnosis might be
childhood rather than ADHD. Now I'm not saying that ADHD doesn't exist, it does
and like I said, we'll talk about that in some other videos. What I'm
getting at here is that kids are usually really good at focusing on what they're
interested in. Do you see the disclaimer there? Normally when parents are
concerned about the focus of their kids, it's about something the parent is
concerned about like school or chores or paying attention to some instructions
that have been given. Now is that important to the child, maybe, maybe not.
Kids are really good at filtering out what they need to pay attention to and
what they can ignore. So I got to tell you about this father that came to see
me, single dad, five kids, okay.
Single dad, five kids and he is pulling his hair out,
he is so frustrated because his kids won't focus, pay attention to him, listen
to the instructions that he's giving them and his question to me was, why do I
have to tell him 12 times before they'll do something? I asked him
an important question right after that. Why do they do it after the 12th time?
Kind of a funny question when you think about it but it's an important one as
well.Are they responding after time 12? If they are, what's different the 12th
time that he's asking them? Now you can imagine how this goes, right? So maybe
dad's in there fixing dinner and he says to his kids "Hey, you guys. Get those toys
picked up and and finish up what you're doing because we're going to eat in just a
few minutes." Now put yourself in the kids' place. Kids sitting there, hearing that,
input and it sounds like white noise, you know just kind of a shh or maybe like
those old Charlie Brown cartoons, remember all the parents, all the adults
sounded like *makes sound* and it didn't mean anything to the kid. Why? Because of the
tone of voice, the way it was delivered, it just kind of blended in and it became
white noise. Time number two, dad says "Hey guys, you need to pick up
that stuff and get ready for dinner." Now do you hear the tone is a little more
urgent, right? And now the kid's thinking, no, not yet, not yet. See, they know what
level it needs to get to before they need to respond because what's dad going to
do? Obviously, he's going to ask again. I can wait. Oh is that frustrating to
hear that? But just check in with it. So times three, "You guys, are you listening?"
Kids processing, is it time to listen yet? No, not yet.
See the kid is really good at focusing on what's important to him, whatever he's
doing right there, right? Not so good at focusing on what dad wants him to focus
on. Why? Because it hasn't hit that level of importance yet for him. Time number
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Finally, time twelve, dad is
beat red in the face, dad's voice is loud now, it's gone up
like a hundred decibels and now as the kid hears this, he registers, oh,
time to pay attention, right? Because now is the time that I
need to respond, if I don't, I'm going to get clobbered, right? So here's the strategy,
you guys, how to get your kids to focus more on what you want them to focus on?
Turn your words from garbage into gold so that as soon as that child hears your
melodious voice, it triggers something in that little brain to say, hey, this is
important, pay attention, focus and they're already really good at focusing
on what's important to them. Boy, that is so important to understand, isn't it?
So how do we turn our words from garbage into gold? Let me ask you a question, how
often do you want to ask them before they respond? I've asked this question to
a lot of parents, there is a very common number one favorite answer to that
question. What? How would that be if you could say something and you only have to
say it once and your child immediately orients and attends and pays attention
and focuses. That would be really awesome, right? So here's what we're going to do,
we're going to learn from time number 12 what it is that makes the difference and
it's the consequence, right? What if you were to follow your words with an
appropriate consequence? Hmm then your words become the trigger for that child
understanding that a consequence is eminent and it's not your tone of voice,
it's not that your face is beet red and that you're yelling and screaming as a
parent, it is simply that you say the word and they know now what to expect so
in an in a recent video. I also shared the difference between a slot machine
and machine. Let's just review that really
quickly because your consistency as a parent matters. A slot machine, I was
presenting at a conference in Las Vegas and you know how all those casinos are
everywhere in these hotels and people stand there all day long,
feeding money into these machines that give them nothing in return. A slot
machine, right? Someone feeds money into a slot machine
and it doesn't respond, what do they do? I mean, it spins and you hear all the
noises and the bells and whistles but it doesn't give you anything, you put more
money in. Seriously, you can go watch people doing this all day long. Why are
they putting more money in? Because sometimes, it pays off, sometimes it pays
off. Can you see how that might relate to parenting? What about a vending machine?
You see someone put money into a vending machine. I watched this on a university
campus, I saw this person put the money into the vending machine, nothing
happened, they looked at it all offended like, what?
I see this person kick the vending machine, they start pounding on it, they
tried to shake it, something's wrong, right? And then you go complain to the
management. I tell you what. If you complain to the management in a casino
that a slot machine didn't pay off, they'll laugh you off of the property,
it's the nature of the machine, see, and it's the nature of the machine that
trains the the user of the machine how to interact with it so what have we
trained our kids? Have we trained them that we're a slot machine? Yes,
sometimes you play me long enough, sometimes I'll pay off and we're all
human, okay. I mean, there are times when you
just cave in and you give your kid what they want even though you know that
you're enabling that behavior, right? Okay, we do that as parents but for general
purposes, are you a vending machine or are you a slot machine? Increasing your
consistency in how you approach, so you say
something or you asked your child to attend or to focus on something, that's
important to you and then you follow it with a consequence consistently. That
turns your words from garbage into gold and as they hear your voice, it triggers
them, oh, I better pay attention to that because something's going to happen next
that's going to be really important to me. Do you see how this works? You can
turn your words from garbage into gold and that way you can help your kids to
use their already installed ability to focus on things that you find to be
important too. As a parent, your words are gold. At least we're going to turn them from
garbage into gold, right? I'm glad that you were here today. I'll see you
tomorrow.